Kaleidoscope

Disclaimers: They're not mine, but they like it when I talk dirty and boss them around. This story contains graphic homosexual situations, so if that squicks you, stop here. Much thanks to the lovely Senbetas, Margie, Sheila, Stacey Holbrook, Marion Sherringham and Caro Dee.

Jim sat in the hospital waiting room, staring at the drying gunk on his hands. Brains. Sandburg’s brains. Sandburg had quite literally lost his mind. Jim started giggling at the horror of it and couldn’t stop.

Simon caught Jim’s shoulders and said gently, “Jim, come with me. Let’s get you cleaned up.”

“No!”

Simon took a deep breath. “Jim. It’s going to be a while before they can tell us anything. You can’t sit here all night like this.”

“What are they going to tell us, Simon? His brains were leaking all over the goddamn floor. Either he’s dead or he’s a vegetable, but either way, he’s not coming back from this one. And it’s all my fault. If I hadn’t yelled, he wouldn’t have looked up--”

“Jim, you’ve ridden this merry-go-round before. You know it doesn’t help. So let’s get you cleaned up and take it from there.”

Simon was stubborn, and he had practice bullying Jim through this sort of thing, so after about an hour of this Jim went to throw up and wash his hands and change into some clean hospital scrubs. But it was hours later by the time an exhausted and gore-covered doctor pushed through the OR doors and searched the faces of Major Crimes for a central person to talk to. Jim pushed forward. “Doctor?”

“He’s stable. Is there a next of kin we can contact?”

“I have power of attorney,” said Jim. “He’s alive? Is he…?”

The doctor frowned and pulled Jim away from the rest of the group. “We’ve repaired the damage to his shoulder, but the primary damage came from the bullet to the head, which passed through his hippocampus, thalamus and temporal lobes, right behind the ears, and there was significant tissue loss. We’ve put a shunt in to reduce swelling, but with your consent I want him moved to Seattle. Cascade General’s neurology department is good, but Dr. Ikari in Seattle is one of the world’s top neurosurgeons, and time can be a factor in reversing damage like this.”

“Reversing? It can be reversed?” Jim tried to assimilate the word. He just managed, “Whatever it takes. Do it. But I’m going with him.”

They ended up in a med-evac chopper, and Jim was caught between yanking his dials down to zero so the deafening rumble of the rotors didn’t kill him and cranking the dials all the way up to hear the subtle, shallow sound of Blair’s breathing. Dr. Ikari’s team met them on the hospital roof in Seattle, took Blair away and left Jim standing in the hallway outside another OR, sick-scared and waiting again, this time alone. But they had said reversible. It made all the difference.

He woke to a hand on his shoulder. “Detective Ellison?”

“Dr. Ikari. How’s Blair?”

Rebecca Ikari, a tiny, pretty woman with little threads of gray shot through her black ponytail, beckoned Jim over to a lightbox next to the information desk and set up a couple of MRI films of Blair’s brain. “Do you see these areas here and here?” she pointed. “That’s the path of the bullet, right by the temporal lobe, the hippocampus, thalamus, and hypothalmus. We’ve stopped the intercranial bleeding and extracted the tissue that was too badly damaged, but I really can’t say anything definite until we see the sort of reactions and responses we can get from him when he wakes up.”

Jim latched onto that last phrase in the sea of technobabble like a life preserver. “So he’s going to wake up?”

“He should. Detective, it’s an old, sad joke in my profession that no one knows less about the brain than a neurosurgeon. I can tell you what the damaged areas do, but the brain has a lot of redundancies built in, which means I can’t tell you for certain how high a level of function Blair will retain until he wakes up and tells me. All I can do is speak in generalities. Those areas of the brain deal with memory and sensory information. His motor control should be completely unaffected, and his language skills should be fine.”

Thank God. Sandburg would go nuts if he couldn’t speak or understand people. “What about his senses? What exactly could go wrong with them?”

“You know, you’re the first person to ever ask me about senses before memory? The thalamus region acts as a sort of relay station for the senses. Sight, smell, taste, sound and touch each have their own separate portions of the brain, but the thalamus is what puts a whistling sound together with the image of steam rising from a kettle, discards the hum from the refrigerator as not part of the picture, and tells you the tea is boiling. He should still experience things at a normal level, but if there is damage, he’ll probably have trouble making sense of it. We can often retrain the rest of the brain to pick up the slack, though.”

Jim nodded. “Can I see him?”

“He’s asleep, but I’ll take you to him.”

They’d shaved Blair’s head. Not all of it, just huge patches, and they’d hacked off the rest to get it out of the way. There were two soaked patches of gauze taped to his head behind both ears. He looked like some science fiction horror. Jim’s vision started graying out, and he forced himself to calm down and reach for Blair’s hand. He could hear Blair’s pulse quicken as Jim stroked his fingers, hear his breath grow a little stronger. “I’m here, Chief. I’m so sorry. I should have trusted you to know what you were doing; I shouldn’t have … You’re in a hospital, okay? And the doctors say you’re going to be fine, so you’d better wake up now before I go take a break and get some Wonderburger. Come on, Chief, you’re all that stands between me and a heart attack; give me a sign here.”

There was no movement from the bed, but Jim pulled up a chair and sat down. He was just getting warmed up.

“So Jack and I handcuff all four clowns and bring them in on possession and trafficking, and the desk sergeant looks up and says, “What is this, some kind of joke?” Jim suddenly sensed a change in Blair’s breathing and Blair’s eyes slid open. “Hey! You’re awake!”

“…jim…”

“That’s right, it’s me! How’re you feeling, buddy?”

Blair tried to sit up and winced, his hand reaching up to touch his bandaged shoulder. “What the hell?”

“Do you remember what happened?” Jim asked.

Blair nodded. “I think I had a vision. There was this panther and a wolf--”

“You saw our spirit animals again?” Jim asked excitedly.

“Again?”

“What?” asked Jim, confused by Blair’s confusion.

“Huh?” Blair shook his head. “What the hell happened to my shoulder, man? It wasn’t enough to drown me, she had to shoot me, too?”

“Alex,” Jim realized.

“Jim, you have to find her. She’s--”

“She’s not a problem, anymore,” Jim said.

Blair relaxed. “Oh. Look, man, I can’t tell you how sorry I am that I didn’t tell you about her; I should have put our friendship first and I screwed up--”

“Blair. It’s not a problem.” Jim realized how cold he sounded and tried to reassure Blair. “That was almost two years ago. You’re in the hospital; you got shot twice, once in the shoulder and once in the head. Do you remember?”

Blair frowned and reached up to touch his head, flinching at the shorn hair and the gauze-covered pain. “How long have I been here?”

“A couple of days. Look, why don’t I go get the doctor; she’ll explain everything.”

He ran to the nurses’ station and had them page Dr. Ikari. Fifteen minutes later, she met him at the nurses’ station. “He’s awake?”

“He’s a little confused, but yeah, he’s awake.” But Blair made Jim a liar; he was asleep when they got back to the room.

“He was awake when I left…”

“That’s all right. His body is using all its energy to heal, it’s perfectly normal to drift in and out of consciousness.” Dr. Ikari sat next to the bed and asked gently, “Blair? Blair, can you wake up a little for me? Open your eyes.”

Blair winced and stirred, then opened sullen eyes to stare at Dr. Ikari.

“I’m Dr. Ikari, I just want to check your injuries and ask you a few questions. Is that all right?”

“No.” Blair glared at Jim. “I know a cop when I see one, even if you are in plain clothes. I’m not pressing charges.” He ignored Jim’s shock and turned to Dr. Ikari. “Just tell me if Charlie is okay.”

Dr. Ikari glanced back at Jim, who shrugged at her in panic. Who the hell was Charlie? And why didn’t Blair recognize him now?

“Can you tell me your name?” Dr. Ikari was gentle but firm.

“Blair Jacob Sandburg. Do you want to know the presidents too?” he asked.

“I’ll settle for the current one,” said Ikari.

“George Bush,” said Blair.

Ikari frowned. “What’s the first lady’s name?”

“Barbara. But if you’re going to ask me for their pets’ names, you’re fresh out of luck.” He sobered and pleaded with them, “What about Charlie? How bad did they hurt him?”

“Who’s Charlie, Blair?”

“Who’s … Charlie Mitchell! They have to have brought him in … oh God, did they take him straight to the morgue? Is he dead?”

Jim couldn’t handle this. “I’ll, uh, I’ll go check on that for you, Chief,” he muttered and blundered out into the hallway. Dimly, he could hear Dr. Ikari running tests on Blair, his senses jacking up to hear better even as he fled down the stairs and out to the ambulance bay. Oh God, oh God, what the hell was wrong with Blair? First he thought he was back in the whole mess with Alex and now he’d lost ten years? What if he just kept regressing? What the hell was happening?

Well, he did have one way to get some answers, even if they weren’t for the big question of whether Blair was going to snap out of this. Jim speed-dialed Major Crimes.

“Major Crimes, Detective Rafe.”

“Rafe?”

“Jim! How’s Blair?”

Jim softly smacked his head against the brick wall. It didn’t make him feel any better. “They don’t know yet. Listen, could you look something up for me? It’s either an old A&B or an old Homicide, Charles Mitchell? Some time between 1989 and 1992.”

“Gee, Jim, could you be a little more vague? It’s okay, it’s okay, I’ll get on it. What does this have to do with anything?”

“Just tell me what you find, okay, Rafe?”

“Sure.” He paused. “Give my best to Sandburg when he wakes up, okay? Tell him we’re all pulling for him.”

“When he wakes up. Sure.” Jim hung up and punched the brick wall, hissing with welcome pain. Then he went back to Blair’s room, where Dr. Ikari was just finishing up her tests. Blair was curled up in a tiny ball, peering over his knees, but he looked up when Jim came into the room. “Did you find Charlie? Is he okay?”

“I’m trying to find out where he is. He’s not at this hospital,” Jim temporized. Five years with Sandburg had taught him a little about obfuscation. “Dr. Ikari? What’s the story?”

Dr. Ikari stood up. “Could you give us a minute, Blair? I’ll be right back.” Jim followed her out of the room, and she said, “His cognitive abilities seem to be fine, and his motor skills check out. But I’m concerned about this time displacement. As far as he’s concerned, he’s eighteen years old and he’s never met you.”

Jim nodded. “When he woke up this morning, he thought it was two years ago. Is he just going to keep skipping back in time?”

Dr. Ikari frowned. “I don’t know. You can’t extrapolate a pattern from two points. I think we just have to wait and see.”

Wait and see. God. Jim glanced into the room, at his best friend who couldn’t remember who he was, and forced himself to calm down. He walked back into the room. “Sorry about that, Chief.”

“You keep calling me that,” said Blair with a frown.

“Sorry. Do you mind it?”

“Nah. Better than Sport. Way too many uncles called me Sport as a kid.”

“Naomi’s boyfriends?” Jim asked, remembering something Sandburg had once said about not wanting to call them all ‘Dad’.

Blair’s eyes narrowed. “You know my mom? I thought you were a cop.”

Jim sat down and studied his hands, trying to decide how much to reveal. If Blair was going to grow younger and forget this, was it worth freaking him out? Still, he was always lashing out at Blair for keeping things from him; he didn’t feel right being hypocritical about it. “You’re right on both counts. I know your mom. And I am a cop. And you are too.”

Blair laughed. “What? You’ve got to be kidding, man. Listen, I’m not in the mood for jokes, okay? Not after what happened.”

“Sandburg, listen to me. You’re not eighteen. You’re a month shy of thirty. You got shot in the head; that’s why you don’t remember.” Before Blair could protest, Jim interrupted, “Go look in the bathroom mirror if you don’t believe me! Or hang on a second and I’ll get your stuff from the nurses’ station, your wallet with your badge in it, or a newspaper from downstairs. It’s the year 2000, you’re a cop, you live with me, and we’ve been partners for the last five years.”

Blair squirmed forward and got out of bed, careful of his shoulder, careful not to get too close to Jim. He walked to the bathroom with Jim right behind, and stopped breathing. “Oh shit.” His heart started hammering and he was hyperventilating, and Jim grabbed him and said, “Chief? Chief! Blair! Deep breaths, Blair, deep breaths. Come on, don’t do this to me!”

Finally Blair’s breathing calmed, and he coughed once and started crying. “This isn’t happening, this is crazy, it’s not real, I want Charlie, where’s Naomi, you have to get her here, you have to find her, this isn’t…” and then there were no words, just sobbing, and Jim held him and slid to the floor, rubbing his partner’s back. “It’s okay, it’s okay, Blair. We’re going to get through this, I promise.”

The panic attack wore itself out, and Blair’s heartbeat slowed to normal. In a testing frenzy, Blair had once asked him how he knew one heartbeat from another. ‘I mean,’ he had said, ‘any time it speeds up or slows down, don’t you get thrown off?’ That wasn’t it at all. People’s hearts and arteries were different sizes, their cholesterol or blood pressure tended to change the percussion too, make it higher and more tinny. Jim knew Blair’s rich, steady heartbeat from Simon’s or Henri’s the same way he would know a bass drum from a snare or a bongo. When it went into overdrive this close to his ear, it felt like a terrible storm coming closer, making Jim uneasy. But now it was slowing, and Jim’s own heart could stop racing too. “You still with me, Chief?”

“Yeah. God. I don’t even know your name.”

“Jim. I’m Jim.”

“And I’m really a cop?”

“Detective Blair Sandburg, Cascade PD.”

“Naomi’s going to kill me.” He twitched in Jim’s arms. “Or, I guess she already knows.”

Oh God, he really didn’t want to be the one to tell Blair. Well, Naomi had always been a distant fact, someone Blair rarely saw. Either Blair would wake up and remember that he’d stopped talking to his mother right after the dissertation fiasco, or he’d wake up with a clean slate again and not be surprised that his globetrotting mother wasn’t by his bedside. “Yeah, she knows, Chief.”

Blair nodded against his chest. “Okay.” He tilted his head up. “Jim?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks for being here for me.” And then he stretched upward and kissed Jim softly on the mouth.

Jim froze. What the hell was that?

“I’m sorry I’m not ready for more than that,” said Blair. “I mean, to you we’ve been together five years, but for me, the last thing I remember was…” He winced. “Last night Charlie and I were still together.”

Blair. Kissed. Him. Blair was straight! Wasn’t he? Blair chased girls. Blair smelled like girls when he came home from dates. What the hell was going on, and why did Blair think they were -- oh. Jim had said they lived together, and this Blair must have assumed that meant they lived together. But Blair wasn’t gay.

“Something wrong, Jim?”

Jim shook his head. He’d had more than enough shocks and crying jags for one day, he wasn’t about to start another. “Everything’s fine, Chief. I’m just thinking.”

Jim stayed up half the night thinking. Blair was brain-damaged in some way. What if it was permanent? Could he make new memories? Would he keep regressing? He rubbed his mouth, the spot near the corner that still seemed to tingle from Blair’s kiss. What the hell was that about? Was Blair really gay? How had he hidden it all these years? And if he was gay, what was Jim supposed to do about it? Aside from the fact that he had completely and understandably freaked out, the kiss had actually felt good. Scary, but good. But Jim wasn’t gay. Yes, he’d had thoughts, everybody had thoughts, but he’d been married for chrissake, and Carolyn had never had any com … plaints … ‘Maybe if you’d kissed me like that before, we’d still be married.’ Oh God. Oh God, he couldn’t handle this.

In the morning, Jim reluctantly returned to the hospital, wary of what he might find, and discovered Blair and Dr. Ikari engaged in cheerful, rapid-fire conversation. Someone had shaved Blair’s head completely to give him less of a piebald look, and it made him seem even less like himself.

“Hey, BJ, do you know who this is?” Dr. Ikari asked.

BJ?

Blair looked Jim over and shook his head. “Nope. Hi, I’m BJ. Pleased to meet you.” And he stuck out his hand and waited until Jim shook it.

“It’s nice to meet you, too, BJ.” Jim licked his lips. “BJ, how old are you?”

“Nine.” Blair gestured to the bandages on his shoulder. “I fell out of a tree. Rebecca says I hurt my head, too.”

“Mrs. Danforth’s tree,” said Jim. “I -- I can’t do this.” He backed out of the room, biting his fist to keep from screaming.

Dr. Ikari followed Jim out to the hallway and put a comforting hand on his shoulder. He jerked away from her touch. “You missed the midnight show,” she said. “He was asking about you. Asking if you got your sight back. And then he woke up again at three, and he was asking about some girl named Amber, whether she was safe.”

“He blacked out when Zeller shot him,” Jim remembered absently, “Cracked some ribs. I took him to the hospital, they told me they didn’t tape ribs anymore, so I just took him home and did it myself.”

Ikari nodded. “I’ve got a theory, although it’s a little early to be sure.”

“I’ll take it.”

“The area that was damaged deals with the interaction between sensory input and memory, accessing memory to interpret the data, then recording the data as new memories. Now hear me out: Blair wakes up and doesn’t know where he is, so his senses go data-hunting. His sight tells him he’s in a hospital room. Maybe his sense of touch tells him he’s hurt. His brain starts putting the picture together, goes hunting for ‘what am I doing here?’, accesses at random a memory of how he got hurt, and he’s stuck in that memory until he goes to sleep and loses his place, at which point the whole process starts over again.”

Jim nodded. It made sense. Drowning, Golden, a broken arm, an apparent assault, the only thing they had in common was a memory of being in the hospital. “If you’re right, can it be fixed? Is he going to be okay?”

“I don’t know. We’re going to have to see how he responds to treatment and therapy, whether he can build new memories and learn new things, or whether he’s just going to be stuck in the past for the rest of his life. But the brain is an amazing organ, and its ability to compensate can be surprising. I’m hopeful.”

“I, ah, he and I work together. I need him, I can’t,” he took a deep breath. “I can’t do my job right without him. But I can’t be taking a nine-year-old to crime scenes.” Was he going to have to explain Sentinels and dials and senses to Blair every day and hope Blair was a quick enough learner to keep Jim from zoning?

Dr. Ikari smiled. “He’s actually phenomenally well-read and outgoing for a nine-year-old.”

Jim grinned; he couldn’t help it. “Yeah, he usually acts like a nine-year-old in a man’s body; I don’t think people will notice the difference.” He took a deep breath, hearing Blair’s admonition to center himself. “Okay, so what do we do? How do we fix this?”

“I’m going to want him to stay here until the worst of the injury is healed, to insure against complications. Then rehabilitative therapy, which he can do back in Cascade. I’ll give you some names to try. Depending on whether that’s helping or not, we might want to consider further surgical intervention, but that could be extremely risky. I want to see how much he can improve on his own before recommending that.” She paused. “Jim, I hate to bring this up, because it’s going to upset you, but I want you to start thinking about the possibility of declaring Blair mentally incompetent.”

“No. Absolutely not. Blair’s the smartest person I know.”

“That may be. But you’re talking about a grown man who is facing months if not years of therapy and surgery, who may have days when he wakes up and thinks he’s three, or seventeen, and doesn’t want to go along with treatment. He may be unable to hold down a job or even consistently take care of himself, but everyone is going to treat him like an adult who knows what he’s doing. If he’s declared mentally incompetent and you’re made his legal guardian, it’s a shortcut to telling people you know what’s best for him.”

“If he’s mentally incompetent, we can’t work together anymore. I’m not going to do that to him.” Before she could open her mouth, he added, “Except as a last resort.” And it’ll never get to that point, he told himself. I’m never giving up on him.

Jim went back inside, where Blair assumed Jim was one of his ‘uncles’ and Naomi was away on a retreat, and they proceeded to spend most of the day together, playing little brainteaser games to test Blair’s knowledge and memory skills. Little BJ was one sharp tack, and fascinating to boot: he beat the pants off of both Jim and Dr. Ikari in Concentration and Trivial Pursuit, he proudly spoke three languages and demonstrated the one word he knew in sign language, ‘I love you’, and -- due to the apparent lack of age-appropriate reading material growing up -- could cheerfully quote three different child psychology manuals, The Feminine Mystique and The Second Sex, and was a huge fan of Wolverine and Spiderman. Jim learned more about his Guide in five hours than he had in five years.

They explored the hospital together, although some of the patients were taken aback by the grown man who climbed up on their beds to tell them all about sherpas and ask if they could feel their chakras spinning. The kids in the cancer ward got a huge kick out of it, though, when Blair flopped down on the floor with them to beat them at backgammon. One little girl took in Blair’s shaved head, the surgical gauze behind each ear, and asked, “Do you have cancer too?”

Blair looked worriedly up at Jim. “You don’t,” Jim assured him. “He doesn’t,” he explained to the little girl. “He just hurt his head. But he’ll be better soon. And so will you.”

Jim walked in the next day and was rewarded with, “Jim! Good to see you!”

“You know who I am?”

“Well, I haven’t forgotten again, if that’s what you mean.” Blair ticked off the facts on his fingers. “I’m a cop, we’re partners, and I hurt my head, right?”

“That’s right,” said Jim, melting with relief. He sat down on the bed. “That’s exactly right.”

Blair leaned forward and kissed his cheek, and Jim froze. Shit. Wrong Sandburg. “Chief? How old are you?”

“Well, you told me I’m almost thirty, but two days ago I was eighteen.”

“You mean three days ago,” Jim corrected.

“Two days. I woke up yesterday, so the day before was ten years ago.”

Jim’s heart sank even lower. “You’re missing a day.”

“I am?”

“Yesterday you were nine. You don’t remember?”

Blair frowned and shook his head. “Shit.”

“My thoughts exactly.”

Blair rubbed his face and sat back to look Jim over. “So what the hell am I going to do? I can’t live like this.”

“Hey, at least you remember something that’s happened since the accident. That’s progress, right?” His cell phone rang. “Hang on a second, Chief. Ellison.”

“Jim? What’s the story down there?”

“Hi, Simon. We’re still figuring that out.”

“Is he awake?”

“Yeah, he’s awake.”

“Is he … backward?”

“Backward -- retarded?” Blair blanched at that. “No, he’s not backward. He’s … confusing. Like I said, the doc is still trying to figure it out.”

“Confusing. Isn’t he always? Any idea when you two can come home? Joel’s crawling the walls with worry.”

“Soon, I hope. We’ll see.”

“Okay. Tell him hi from everyone.”

“Okay.” Jim hung up. “Hi from everyone.”

“Cool. Who’s everyone?”

“Our friends. People we work with. Simon, Joel, Rafe, Brown, Megan, any of those ring a bell?”

“Sorry.” Blair screwed up his face, thinking. “Shit. How long have these people been my friends?”

“Years.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah.” And because he couldn’t stand a universe where someone like Blair didn’t remember his friends, he added, “Joel had a breakdown after a bomb he was defusing went off anyway. You just talked him down, didn’t make him feel like a coward or a screw-up. He always stuck up for you. And Simon talks a good game, growls at you and pretends he’s pissed to keep you in line, but the truth is he’s grateful for the way you’ve helped him get through to his son, Daryl, and he thinks the world’s a more interesting place with you in it. Megan…”

By the time they came home two weeks later, Jim felt like he was gaining some ground. True, he never knew what the day was going to be like until he knew which Blair he was talking to, and mostly it was new Blairs triggered by odd data like a bird outside the window, or the color of a nurse’s hair, but once or twice it was reruns, and reruns meant fresh memories built on the old foundations. Jim wondered how many Blairs were in there, whether he could catch and catalogue them all, bring them all up to speed and make Blair normal again, or whether there were an infinite number of Blairs and he’d be explaining the accident over and over for the rest of their lives.

His favorite had to be five-year-old Blair, who woke up and stumbled off to the bathroom to pee without so much as a ‘good morning’ to Jim, who sat by the bed. One minute later he threw the bathroom door open, naked as a jaybird and clearly freaking out.

“I have a huuuuge penis,” Blair informed him in a shocked tone. “Huge.”

“I can see that,” said Jim. “You want to wrap up in a towel, Chief?”

He averted his gaze while Blair tucked a towel around his waist. “And I’ve got hair all over.”

“You can say that again,” said Jim, memories of clogged shower drains and filthy sinks making the corners of his mouth twitch.

“And my chest,” said Blair, gesturing to the nipple ring in horror, “has a zipper!”

Jim fell off the chair laughing.

He hadn’t explained Sentinels yet. He’d lucked into the Alex Blair again and a Switchman Blair who thought he was sneaking into the hospital to find his precious Sentinel, and both Sandburgs managed to talk him into dialing down his senses, meditating to rejuvenate his frayed nerves. Aside from that, he didn’t want to waste a whole day explaining everything to Sandburg and have poor Sandburg struggling to reinvent the wheel -- or in this case, the dial -- every day.

He’d agonized over whether to tell their friends or not. Why tell them and change everything when Blair might wake up one morning and be back to normal? If they knew, would Simon ask for Blair’s resignation? Would H freak out and tease Sandburg to lighten the tension? If Jim could find all the Blairs and tell them how to fake it, he might have considered doing just that, but as things stood, it wasn’t a possibility.

So Jim called Simon the morning they were scheduled to go home. “Banks,” came the familiar growl.

“It’s me, Simon.”

“Jim! How’s Sandburg?”

Jim paused, trying to figure out the best way to word it. “He’s healing. But there were some complications. He’s … he’s fractured, Simon.”

“Fractured? Like a skull facture?”

“I wish. Okay, Daryl plays video games, right?”

“All the time, usually when he should be doing his homework.”

“You know how he can save a game at multiple points, go back and play from any of the points he saved? Sandburg’s a little like that right now. He wakes up, tries to figure out when and where he is, and once his brain’s chosen that point, he goes on from there.” It was actually kind of interesting, trying to figure out what sight or sound had triggered each morning’s choice, but that was beside the point. “One morning he’ll be sure that yesterday we went to Peru to save you, the next he’ll be telling me how sorry he is about Danny dying. But he learns from then on, which is pretty lucky. Apparently lots of times with this sort of injury you can’t make new memories, or you have learning disabilities.”

“God. Is he going to get better?”

“They don’t know. But I thought I should warn you, just in case he doesn’t remember you or the guys when you see him tonight. Some days he wakes up pre-Sarris.” Jim took a deep breath. “Simon, I’d like to take it on a trial basis, for now.”

“You mean have him stay on the force? Ride with you? Jim, if he can’t remember what case you’re on, or even how to stay out of the line of fire--”

“I need him, Simon. You know that. Look, if it doesn’t work out, you can pull him. The last thing I want is for him to get hurt or killed again because of me. All I’m asking is a chance to see whether we can work around this.”

“Jim, you’re pushing it.” Simon sighed. “I’ll wait until I see him tonight.”

“Thanks, Simon. You have no idea how much this means.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’ll pass the word along for you. See you tonight.”

Luck was with them; it was ‘Charlie’ Blair today, the eighteen-year-old who had already been up to bat twice and remembered what Jim had said about their friends. Much as BJ was growing on Jim, he didn’t think BJ was the best spokesman to introduce Simon to the new Sandburg/s. The train ride was short, and Blair spent most of it staring out the window, lost in thought and rubbing his head absently. The stitches had come out and, after two weeks, Blair’s hair had grown into a reasonable buzz cut with two patches by the scars where hair would no longer grow. Hopefully the curls would eventually camouflage them, but for now the scars called attention to themselves.

When they got to Prospect, though, Jim said, “Sounds like we’ve got a surprise party waiting for us, Chief.”

“I don’t hear anything,” said Blair. He looked up at Jim. “What if they don’t like me?”

“That would be impossible, Chief.” He could feel Blair on the edge of a panic attack as they rode up in the elevator, and he rubbed Blair’s back soothingly. The door was unlocked, and opened to reveal the Major Crimes gang jumping up from an impromptu poker game to crowd nervously together, eyeing Jim and Blair for a sign.

“Welcome back, Blair,” said Rafe.

Blair licked his lips, took a deep breath and stepped forward, offering his hand to Rafe. “You must be Megan,” he said. He grinned and asked Jim over his shoulder, “You said Megan was the pretty one with the bad taste in clothes, right?”

“Hey!” Rafe protested, eyes lighting up at the joke, “You wish you had as good taste as I do.” He paused and asked, “You really don’t remember me?”

Blair shook his head. “I don’t now,” he said. “But I will. You’re Rafe, right?” At Rafe’s nod, he pointed to each of the other members of Major Crimes. “Megan. Henri. Joel? And Simon.”

“How’re you feeling, Sandy?” Megan asked.

Blair shrugged. “My shoulder hurts. It’s weird, though, my head doesn’t. Dr. Ikari says that’s pretty normal, because there aren’t any nerves in the brain.” He glanced at the table. “Is that … poker?”

“You don’t know how to play, Hairboy?” Henri asked.

Blair shook his head.

Henri grinned. “Oh, then it would be my pleasure to school -- I mean, teach you,” he said. “Pull up a chair!”

Before they sat down, Joel grabbed Blair’s shoulder. Blair turned to face him, but for a long moment, Joel didn’t say anything. Finally he managed, “I’m glad you’re okay, kid,” and wrapped Blair in a quick hug before turning away to sit down at the table.

Rafe pulled Jim aside. “About that cold case you had me look up?”

Jim pulled Rafe out of Blair’s hearing range. He could always tell Blair later if the news was good, but he didn’t want to give Sandburg any bad shocks. “Yeah?”

“In 1989, two college kids were nearly beaten to death. It was hard to find in Records because when they woke up, they both insisted no charges be made and refused to name their assailants. One was Charles Mitchell. The other was, get this--”

“Blair Sandburg.” Jim shook his head. “I’ve known Blair for five years, and in the last two weeks I’ve gotten to know him better than anyone should ever have to, but I can’t picture Blair caving in and letting someone almost literally get away with murder.”

“Except you,” said Rafe, and when Jim shot him a shocked, angry look, he added, “Not that you would ever hurt the kid, not physically, but how many times have you kicked him out or treated him like shit over the years? And he always lets it slide. He’d cave if it meant keeping a friend.”

Jim mulled that over as Blair proceeded to take most of their collected cash. After Henri finally said, “That’s it for me,” he turned to Blair and added, “You sure you never played before?”

Blair grinned. “Are you kidding? Uncle Joe taught me to play when I was nine!”

“And you let us think … yeah, you’re definitely Sandburg, all right!” Henri scruffed Blair’s prickly new hair and said, “I think I’m going to head out. Anyone need a ride?”

“Thanks, H,” said Rafe. “Good to see you’re okay, Blair.”

“I should get going,” said Megan. She stood up and kissed Blair’s forehead. “Take care of yourself, Sandy. Call if you need anything.”

Joel just hugged Blair tight and ran out of the apartment without speaking.

Simon stood up and shook Blair’s hand. “Good to meet you again, Sandburg. I’ll see you tomorrow.” He turned to Jim. “One week.”

Jim grinned. “Thank you, Simon. One week is all we need.”

After Simon left, Blair asked, “One week for what?”

“Remember I told you we work together? I asked Simon and he said he’s going to give us a chance to work together again.”

Blair turned pale. “Uh, Jim? I know my older self is a cop, but I’m not. I won’t know what to do!”

“That’s okay,” said Jim. “I get the feeling sometimes that you didn’t know what you were doing the first time around, either. You’ll figure it out.” He took a deep breath. “Blair, do you know anything about Sir Richard Burton?”

“Of course! You mean the explorer, right? Man, that’s why I came to Rainier, for the Burton collection.”

“Yeah, I always wondered what was so great about that. I mean, books are books, right?”

“No!” said Blair, gesturing wildly. “The Burton collection has all his fieldnotes, all his handwritten manuscripts with corrections, and his own personal library. You can track how each idea developed, every wrong turn he took and why he took it, even which earlier thinkers influenced the way he thought.”

“Okay, I can see that,” said Jim. “Actually, it’s funny you should mention that, because this apartment is home to the Blair Sandburg collection. All his fieldnotes, his personal library, the whole shebang.” He pointed to Blair’s room. “It’s all in there. I’m going up to bed; I’ll see you in the morning, okay?”

“Sure,” said Blair, his eyes already flicking to the temptation of the open door.

“And Blair?”

“Yeah?”

“You did really great tonight, took everything in stride. You warmed up to them even though they must seem like perfect strangers to you. I think it really helped the guys get over their nervousness.”

Blair nodded. “I figure it’s like karma.”

Oh great, a trip to the Sandburg zone. “What do you mean?”

“Well, karma is the principle that everything you did in your past lives still counts, for good or bad, and you still have a connection to all the people you knew in those lives. Just because you can’t remember doesn’t mean it can’t affect you, doesn’t mean it’s not real.” He walked into his bedroom. “Just give me a bit to go through all this and I’ll come up to bed too, okay?”

Jim froze with his hand on the banister, but he said lightly, “I know you, Chief; you’re going to stay up all night reading and fall asleep at your desk with your glasses on.” He went upstairs to the sound of Blair’s laughter and sat down heavily on the bed. What was wrong with him? Why didn’t he just tell ‘Charlie’ Blair that this was just a huge misunderstanding and they were just really good friends?

I don’t want to lose this, he realized. He’s taking it slow, and he’s not even up to bat most days. Those two kisses scared the shit out of me, but I don’t want to lose this forever before I know if it’s a good scared or a bad scared.

He was half asleep when he heard Blair murmur softly from downstairs, “Jim? Can you hear me?”

“Yeah, I can hear you,” Jim yelled down. He groaned and flung a pillow over his head when he heard the rumbling thump of Blair launching himself up the stairs and the shudder of the mattress as Blair threw himself down on it.

“This is incredible! You’re really a Sentinel? And we’re a team? Am I your sidekick? I can do sidekick.”

Jim threw the pillow at Sandburg. “Let’s get one thing straight, Darwin, because I’m only going to say this once.” To each of you, he mentally added, with a pang of irritation. “I am not your personal superhero. Yes, I have the senses. Yes, you were running tests on me. But I’m not your guinea pig and I’m not a sideshow freak and I swear to God, Sandburg, if you treat me like either, I’m going to kick your ass six ways from Sunday.”

“I’m sorry, Jim, I didn’t mean to piss you off. It’s just I’ve been dreaming about finding a Sentinel for six years now, and I got a little over-excited. I’d never treat my boyfriend like a freak--”

“I’m not -- a freak,” Jim caught himself. He rubbed a hand over his face. “Sandburg, go down and read, okay? We’ll talk more about it the next time you show up.” He watched Blair troop down the stairs. “And Chief?”

“Yeah?”

“No one knows about the senses except Simon and Megan, okay?” He had a feeling the rest of the guys hadn’t been fooled by Blair’s public declaration of fraud, but ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’.

“Got it,” said Blair.

In the morning, Jim woke up to the smell of scrambled eggs and plodded downstairs to find Blair cooking breakfast in boxers and no tee shirt. Jim blinked. Blair never went without a tee shirt. “Which one are you?”

“Still me,” said Blair without looking up from the eggs.

“That doesn’t help.”

“We came home last night and I completely hosed the guys for a hundred and fifty bucks, and you’re a Sentinel and it’s no big deal.”

“You didn’t sleep?” Jim asked.

“Apparently I’m a good writer,” he said. “Kept me up all night. And five years of tests and notes, sixteen years of research, it’s a lot to catch up on. I’m not even halfway through.”

Jim shook his head, impressed, but thought of something else. “Chief? When we go in today, I need you to remember you’re not trained as a cop anymore, okay? When I tell you not to touch something, don’t touch. When I tell you to stay back, you stay back. I don’t want you screwing up evidence or getting yourself hurt again.”

“Jim? How did I get shot?”

“Come on,” Jim sidestepped, “We have to eat fast or we’ll be late. Those eggs look good, Chief.”

“Jim?”

“We’ll talk about it later.” Before Blair could protest, Jim added, “There will be a later.”

They drove to the station and Blair was greeted excitedly by everyone who hadn’t been there the night before: Rhonda, the secretarial staff, Records, the janitor, and a couple of buddies from the Academy, all of whom Blair faked like he knew. Rhonda sensed the difference, but Joel pulled her aside and talked to her privately, and she just stared at Blair with an anguished expression and didn’t say anything more about it.

A huge pile of paperwork had accumulated in their absence, and Jim was relieved for the opportunity to ease Blair back into police work. Sandburg was just as much of a whiz at writing reports at eighteen as he had been at thirty, and by lunch time both Rafe and Brown had gotten over their initial delicacy and just cheerfully started wheedling for Blair to do their reports, too. After some good-natured ribbing and the bribe of Indian food for lunch, Blair caved and let them pile his stack of papers even higher. When quitting time rolled around, Blair raised an eyebrow at Jim and said, “Oh yes. Very dangerous. I think I was risking a really bad paper cut for a moment there.”

“Don’t get your panties in a twist, kiddo. A lot of days are quiet like that. When a case comes up, you’ll be the first to know.”

They decided to make frittata for dinner, and Blair chopped the vegetables while Jim browned the sausage and onions, but they kept knocking into each other to get items they thought the other had forgotten. The third time his knuckles accidentally whacked Blair’s hand, Jim gripped the counter and clenched his jaw to keep from showing any sign of the terrible keening in his heart. The easy camaraderie he’d shared with the young anthropologist was dead. Blair, his Blair, was dead.

The moment passed, and Jim got himself back under control. When he opened his eyes, he found Blair still slowly chopping vegetables, his pupils dilated and his expression slightly punch-drunk, a look Jim usually only saw around finals. “You’re exhausted,” said Jim. “You need to get some sleep.”

“I’m fine,” said Blair. He cut up the last of the zucchini and Jim transferred everything to the sizzling pan. Blair made himself a cup of chai, the scent rich with cinnamon and honey. He’d once told Jim that chai had twice the caffeine of coffee.

“You drink that and you’re going to be up all night,” Jim joked.

Blair sniffed appreciatively at the steam and took a big sip.

“Fine, don’t come crying to me when you can’t sleep,” said Jim.

Blair shot him a devilish, if faded, grin. “What if I just make you come crying?” he joked.

Jim’s mouth was suddenly dry. “I’d better add the eggs.”

Blair sobered. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t joke about it when I’m not ready for it yet. I know this must be hell for you.”

“You have no idea,” Jim muttered under his breath. Aloud, he said, “Don’t worry about it. We’ve both got a lot to adjust to.”

After dinner, they curled up on the couch to watch TV. After a few minutes, Jim looked over to see Blair’s eyelids lowering and then widening too far, over and over, his face stiff with the effort of staying awake despite the massive jolt of caffeine. As Jim watched, the eyes fluttered closed and snapped open a half-second later.

“Jim?” he said, kind of scared.

“Yeah, Chief?”

“Oh man, I had the strangest…” Blair’s hand drifted up and trembled as it touched the baby-fine fuzz on his head. “Oh God, it wasn’t a dream. How did we get here from the hospital? How long has it been?”

“Just a couple of days,” said Jim.

“Just?” Blair was shaking, his mouth twisting up in what was either hysterical laughter or tears.

“Come on, Chief, you’re exhausted. You need your rest.”

Blair turned anguished eyes on him. “But I only just got here,” he pleaded. “Don’t make me go again.”

Jim’s heart nearly broke, but he stood up and almost literally dragged Blair to his little room. “Come on,” he urged, “I’ll sit with you while you go to sleep if you need me to. I’ll be right here and you’ll remember when you wake up, okay?”

Blair kept subvocalizing, “no, no, no…” but Jim stripped him down to boxers and a tee shirt and bundled him into bed despite his protests. Finally Jim had no choice but to play his trump card. “I need you, Sandburg. You need to sleep if you’re going to help me.”

He sat there and rubbed Blair’s shoulders and chest until the bloodshot eyes closed and the compact body relaxed. When he was sure Blair was finally out for the count, he ran his hand tenderly over the baby fuzz and murmured, “It’s okay, buddy. It’ll all seem better in the morning.”

The next few days were pretty low-key, mostly ABD Blair and one return appearance from ‘Charlie’ Blair. The master obfuscator was so adept at picking up clues of past conversations or events from people’s dialogue that he was able to trick everyone but Jim into relaxing and treating him as normal. He made his life appear seamless, when it was more like a trapeze act: a leap of faith from one crossbar to the next, done with such fluid grace that it appeared no great trick at all. Even Simon began to relax.

“Ellison! Sandburg! My office,” said Simon. ‘Charlie’ Blair was up again today, not ideal, but certainly better than a childish Blair. They went in and sat down. “Coffee?” Simon asked.

“Thanks, I could use some,” said Blair. He gratefully accepted a cup and inhaled the steam with a happy sigh.

“I’ve got a case I could really use you on, Jim, if Sandburg’s feeling up to it.”

“No problem,” said Blair. “What is it?”

“Serial kidnapping. They’re all young women, brunettes, petite, all students at Rainier.”

“Oh man, I hope it’s no one I know,” said Blair automatically. “Shit. Everyone I knew at Rainier’s thirty now, right?”

“I want you two to go over the crime scenes, see if you can find any traces Forensics missed. We don’t have much to go on at this point.”

“Nothing on campus?” Jim asked hopefully. “I don’t think Blair’s ready for that.”

“Sorry, Jim. Two of the students were abducted from Rainier. The other lived off campus.”

“Look, I can handle it,” said Blair. “I’ve been there for two years, I just won’t recognize anyone. It’s not a big deal.”

Jim winced, exchanged a glance with Simon and saw they were thinking the same thing. It was hard enough for Blair to see people from Rainier who thought he was guilty of something he hadn’t done. Seeing people who thought he was guilty of something he didn’t remember not doing was going to be excruciating. “Let’s start with the off campus one.”

“Ji-im!”

“Just to start,” Jim wheedled. “I don’t want you distracted by pretty coeds at your first crime scene. Crawl before you walk, okay?”

“Fine.” Blair stormed out.

Simon said sentinel-soft, “Maybe you should take Megan to the campus, Jim.”

Jim nodded. “Don’t worry, sir. I’ll handle it.” He found Blair down in the garage, sitting in the passenger seat, waiting for him.

“We’re going to Rainier,” said Blair.

“We’re going to 580 West Market Street,” Jim corrected. “We’ll do Rainier tomorrow.”

“You mean you’ll do Rainier tomorrow and not tell me today even happened so I don’t know where you’re going,” Blair snarled. “I’m not a kid, Jim. I told you I’m not going to freak out. You said we were partners; don’t you trust me?”

“Always, Chief. I just … I don’t want to see you hurt.”

“So Rachel and Brian and Fenster won’t be at the student center. I’ll live. Come on, Jim, let’s go.”

Jim’s heart was in his mouth as he pulled up to the parking lot between the dorms and the student center. “Melissa Cutler and Charlene Davis. Melissa disappeared from the game room in the student center, Charlene was last seen at her dorm. The game room has been cordoned off; let’s try there first.”

“C’mon, Jim. I know where it is.” Blair led the way, seemingly oblivious to the cold, shocked looks he was getting from students. He stopped to chat with a few people who looked at him strangely and made excuses for why they had to run off, and Blair just shrugged and bounced down the stairs to the basement, where yellow police tape barred access to the game room.

The room was pretty large, with pinball machines and video games along one wall, a desk where the student employee sat, and pool and foosball in the middle of the room. “Okay,” said Blair, “So what do you need me to do?”

“Just don’t touch anything, and watch to make sure I don’t zone. You read about zones?”

“Yup. I -- the other me -- described them pretty well, so I know what to look for.”

Jim started by dialing up his sight, checking the carpet for fibers or blood, not really sure what he was looking for. It was a high-traffic area in a public building; he had no idea what would be signs of the killer or the victim and which would be innocuous. “I’m not getting anything, Chief.”

“The report said that she worked here, right?”

“Yeah.”

“She was the last victim, and they cordoned off this room after someone heard her scream. So logically, she was the last person to sit behind the desk. How about starting there?”

Jim obediently walked over to the desk, dialed up smell and got a good sense of her scent. He knelt on the carpet and saw the imprints of her shoes, the almost invisible depressions in the old carpet where she had been dragged to the basement window. “The guy wore size ten-wide boots,” said Jim. He looked up at the window frame. “I see some skin and blood, it looks like someone’s arm caught where a splinter had broken off. I’ll ask Forensics to come back and type it. Come on, Chief, let’s go outside and see if we can track the footprints.”

“All right!” said Blair. “This is so cool!”

Jim called it in as he walked up the stairs, and walked outside and around the building to kneel by the little window. “Okay, Sandburg … Sandburg?” The former anthropologist was nowhere to be seen. Damn. Jim backtracked around the building, dialing up his hearing as he ran.

“…sorry. I got shot in the head. I thought Jim told everyone.”

“Didn’t tell me.”

“Really? Because everyone’s been looking at me funny this morning, so I figured they all knew and just weren’t sure how to talk to me.”

Jim rounded the last corner and found Blair talking to a familiar, wheelchair-bound man. “That makes sense,” Kelso said. “I guess I’m just out of the loop. Pleased to meet you again, Blair. I’ll drop by later with that book I was telling you about, and we can talk more.”

“Jim! Hey! This is Jack Kelso. He knows me.”

“We’ve met,” said Jack. “How are you, Jim?”

“Fine.” As far as he knew, Blair hadn’t talked to the ex-CIA agent since the press conference over a year ago. His choice or Jack’s? “Did Blair explain?”

“He said he got shot,” said Jack, eyeing Blair’s new, pink scars. “Is he -- sorry, Blair, with an injury of my own I should know better than to talk around you. Are you going to be all right?”

Blair shrugged. “I don’t know. Look, just to warn you, if you’re going to come by with the book it’s probably better if you came by before I go to sleep, because I won’t remember this conversation when I wake up.”

“You can’t make new memories?” Jack asked.

“I can make them,” Blair said, “They just get misfiled. Today is getting filed ten years ago. I don’t know what file is going to open tomorrow.”

“I see,” said Jack, though it wasn’t clear to Jim whether Jack saw or not.

“Come on, Chief, we’ve got work to do.”

“Okay. Listen, come by the loft tonight, do you know where that is? I’m looking forward to it, man.” He looked up and saw another familiar face. “Dr. Stoddard!”

“Oh shit,” said Jack, at the same moment Jim whispered, “Blair, don’t!”

“Good to see you man,” Blair said, running up to greet his old mentor. “I thought you were still -- right; of course you’d be back by now. How are you?”

Eli Stoddard took a step back. “Blair,” he said in a flat voice, turned on his heel, and walked away.

“Dr. Stoddard?” Blair asked, his expression naked with pain and shock.

“Let him go,” Jim pleaded. “You don’t need him.”

Blair was still staring after the figure walking off towards the science building. “He’s taken care of me for two years,” he said in a low, hurt voice, “I was so scared when I got here and he’s been like a dad to me. What did I do to piss him off like that? I’d better go apologize, whatever it was--”

Jack grabbed Blair’s arm. “Blair, Jim’s right. That’s not a hornet’s nest you want to stir up right now.”

“Just tell me what I did, so I can go apologize!” said Blair.

“Later,” Jim pleaded.

“Not later, I won’t remember to ask you later! Tell me now!”

“That’s exactly why we’re not telling you,” Jack covered. “This is not a problem that can be fixed in a day. If you stir that whole mess up again and you can’t stick around to clean it up afterwards, you’re just going to make it worse.”

Blair stared at the two of them, shock and anger and sorrow warring on his face, and then he turned and marched off.

“Blair!” Jim yelled, starting to go after him, but Jack stopped him.

“For heaven’s sake, Jim, don’t run. I can’t follow that fast. Give him some time to process it; at least he’s not going in the same direction as Eli.”

“He’s angry,” said Jim. “Blair doesn’t get angry.”

“He’s more scared than angry, I think,” said Jack. “He’s spent his whole life jumping from one place to another, landing among strangers and trusting his own abilities to carry him through. From what I gather, now he’s stuck in the same place and it’s completely alien to him, and he can’t even trust his own faculties. It’s a lot to absorb.”

“You sound pretty sure of that after five minutes.”

“A bit of deja vu. Blair was one of the people who got through to me; it’s nice to be able to return the favor, however sorry I am that it’s necessary.” He paused. “I was very sorry when he dropped out of sight after the press conference. I wanted to offer my support, but I was afraid, given my past associations, he might worry that I had another agenda.”

“Mm,” Jim grunted, noncommittal. “Well, with or without him, I’ve got work to do. You’ll come by later?”

“Thank you, yes. Good to see you, Jim.”

Jim was able to track the boot prints and subtle skid marks across the lawn to the parking lot and waited for the Forensics people to show before heading off to Charlene Davis’s dorm. He didn’t find anything there, despite a careful search. Finally he gave up and went searching for Sandburg. He checked the library. No dice. The student center. The Museum of Anthropology. In vain, he backtracked to check Hargrove Hall, but froze at the sight of Blair sprawled on the rim of the fountain.

“No!” He ran across the commons and grabbed Blair, still breathing, still breathing, not dead, just sleeping, and Blair opened his eyes in confusion and looked at the rippling water. “This isn’t the pool,” he said.

“No, it’s not,” said Jim, feeling shell-shocked. How could Blair nap? How could Blair nap here?

“Mama said we were going to the pool today.”

“Tomorrow,” Jim promised. That word had just about taken over his vocabulary lately. But Jim suddenly had an idea. The doctor had said that whenever Blair woke up, he was disoriented until his brain sorted through the incoming data and decided what year it was. When he kept waking up in the hospital, he sorted through hospital memories. Most of the time when he woke up in his bedroom, he was his full age. When he woke up just now by shallow, rippling water, he reached for a memory of a kiddie pool. Didn’t it stand to reason, then, that if he woke up in his own bed, with the case files from the previous day spread out beside him, the chances of him latching onto memories of living and working with Jim as an adult detective would skyrocket?

He took Blair home, half-tempted to stuff him with Valium, but instead he parked Blair in front of the TV to occupy him, left a number where he could be reached, and went off to look at the other crime scene, hoping that what turned out to be six-year-old Blair would be less disaster-prone than his older self. All their friends were working, and Jim cringed at the thought of explaining Blair’s adult body and child mind to a baby-sitter.

Nothing much useful at the other crime scene; Forensics had done their job well. He came home to find Blair sitting cross-legged on the table, eating pizza and learning to play chess with Jack Kelso, whom he cheerfully re-introduced to Jim. Kelso let himself out, and Jim had Blair tucked in downstairs by seven. He didn’t leave the file folders yet; only ‘Charlie’ Blair had seen those. He would wait until tomorrow night, after Blair had spent a day as his older self, and give him the files just before bed.

The plan worked like a charm. Blair woke up yelping that he was late to proctor an exam, Jim spent half an hour explaining the situation and coaching Blair through a panic attack, and they were even on time to the station. He casually suggested Blair study the case files for clues before bed, and the day after was even better: Blair woke up, saw the case files, and had the continuity he needed to tap into the same age he had been the day before.

They spent the day interviewing roommates and friends of the three girls. Hillary Peterson and Charlene Davis had been friends, and when they had both quietly disappeared the same weekend, everyone had assumed they went off camping until they missed a test the following Tuesday. Melissa Cutler, on the other hand, had not been close with either of the two girls. It was she who had been abducted from the student center right before closing. But none of the friends could remember suspicious phone calls or strangers lurking nearby, jealous exes or angry boyfriends. And so far, there were no ransom demands from the kidnapper at all.

But despite the lack of leads in the case, Jim was making progress on another front, and by the third continuous day, Jim developed a bit of a swagger.

On the fourth day, Jim woke up and Blair was gone.

He ran downstairs and confirmed by sight what his hearing already knew; Blair wasn’t in the loft. No note, no explanation, not even a clue of which Blair was in control, or whether he would remember that the loft was home.

Jim scrabbled for the phone. “Major Crimes, Inspector Connor,” said Megan.

“Connor, he’s gone,” said Jim. “I don’t know where he is or where he’d go, but we have to find him, fast. I can’t call Dispatch or ask Simon for help; they’ll suspend him if they think I don’t have faith in him, but--”

“Jim, slow down. Joel and I are just getting off shift; we’ll take the streets. You check all the places he might go. We’ll find him.”

“Thank you,” Jim said fervently, then ran downstairs to the truck. The library was no good; SuperNatural, the eco-supermarket, was a washout; the warehouse didn’t yield any sign of his partner. Jim scoured the town, looking for any place that his partner had ever even mentioned offhand, but came up with nothing.

Finally, he drove back to the loft just to check his messages, and found Blair hunched up on the sofa, shaking and fighting back tears.

“Blair? Thank God. Where the hell have you been? Are you okay?”

Blair laughed, a terrible, brittle sound, and Jim sat down next to him and put an arm around Blair’s shoulder, waiting until the smaller man leaned into him. “He said he’d call the police.”

“Who did?” Jim asked, his mind whirling.

“He told me to g-get the hell off his property and he c-called me a f-f-faggot and s-said … he said he w-w-wished I’d j-just gone off to d-die of AIDS.”

Jim tightened his arms around Blair. “It’s okay, Sandburg.”

“He s-said if I c-came n-n-near his fam-mily, he’d t-take out a r-restraining order.”

Who was Blair talking about? Jim wasn’t even sure which Blair it was; for all he knew, one of the younger Blairs might have simply gone to the playground with the little kids and frightened the parents. All he knew was Blair was hurting, hurting worse than Jim had ever seen him. “Can you start from the beginning, Chief?”

Blair looked up at Jim. “I’d never t-tell, right? I’d die before I outed someone who had that much to lose. I didn’t betray him, did I?”

Memories of the press conference echoing in his mind, Jim tilted over to look Blair in the eye. “I know that, Chief. Better than anyone.” And then his brain clicked into gear. “Charlie? You’re talking about Charlie?”

“After I left you and that guy, Jack, I went to the alumni office. I had to find out what had happened, whether he was dead or alive. You don’t know what they did to us, I was so scared … This morning I woke up and it was four days later, and there wasn’t any time, and I went to his address and this eight-year-old girl answered the door, and Charlie was her dad. He was so angry, Jim, he thought I was going to tell his kids or his wife or something. He was married. I mean, I can understand being in the closet; he wanted to be a teacher, and lots of school districts freak if you’re gay. Plus his family’s pretty religious; it would have meant never talking to his parents or his sister again. I’d never take that away from him, I know I wouldn’t.”

“You didn’t, Chief,” said Jim. “You both insisted on dropping the charges.”

Blair melted in relief. “How could he marry some poor woman and trick her into thinking he loved her? He wasn’t bi like me, he was completely gay. How could he do that?”

“You never told me you were bi,” said Jim, hoping this Blair would assume he’d told Jim he was gay and give him more information.

“I usually don’t tell people. It gets to be a headache: homophobes lumping you with the gays, gays shunning you because you’re politically inconvenient, potential dates breaking things off because they’re scared you can’t commit or that you need to date both a girl and a guy at the same time to be satisfied, basically all the flak of being gay and none of the support. I’m tired of it. I’m so tired of it.”

It explained a lot about Blair’s behavior when they first met; the nervous laughter and constant jokes about sleeping with tons of women were probably Blair’s fear that the heterosexual cop who had already thrown him up against a wall once would beat the crap out of him if he turned out to be a fairy. After all, it hadn’t been the first time he’d been queerbashed.

“You said the daughter looked about eight?” Jim thought out loud, “He probably got married right after the attack.”

Blair thought it over. “Maybe. Sounds like him. Sometimes, when he was scared that people could tell just by looking at him, he would snap at me, blame me for what he was. Probably completely freaked him out, me tracking him down after ten years. God, I’m such an idiot. That Jack guy was right, I’m just going to do more damage blundering into things blind.”

“You could have waited. You could have asked me to help you,” said Jim. “I woke up and you weren’t here; I was scared you were hurt.”

Blair pulled away. “I was so tired from staying up all night that I closed my eyes, just for a second, by a fountain. I open them again and it’s four days later and I have no idea how I got back to the loft. It’s been more than three weeks since I woke up in the hospital, and I’ve existed less than a third of that. Every time I go to sleep, I’m scared I’ll wake up and another ten years will be gone, or that I won’t wake up at all. I don’t want to wait for things. I’m scared to go to sleep at night. The second I woke up, I ran out the door to test the address I’d gotten from the alumni office before I lost any more time.”

Jim thought guiltily of his own part in that, trying to engineer it so that an older Blair was the one driving, but after all, all the Blairs must feel this way, from Detective Sandburg down to little BJ.

“You’re right, though,” said Blair. “You’ve been there for me all along, ever since I woke up in the hospital, and all I’ve done is yell at you or try to get around you.” He closed his eyes in pain. “We’ve been together five years, you said? I know we met because of your senses, I read it in my fieldnotes. But I can’t remember how we fell in love. I can’t remember your favorite food, or how you like to be kissed…” He stretched up and brushed his lips hesitantly over Jim’s. Blair’s lips were warm and soft and his breath was sweet, his skin still smelled like the ocean from his crying jag. “You’re not kissing me back,” he murmured against Jim’s mouth.

Jim gulped, his whole body tense. He was scared out of his mind, but he wasn’t ready for Blair to stop either. “May--” he fought the tightness in his throat. “Maybe I’m afraid of getting hurt.”

Blair’s lips moved to Jim’s throat, biting and sucking, and Jim squirmed to relieve the tightness in his pants. “I won’t hurt you,” Blair murmured against his skin. “Just tell me and I’ll stop. I just want to learn you again.” He moved back up to Jim’s mouth, nibbling his lower lip, and then his tongue slid in, and Blair tasted so goddamn good, and Jim moved to kiss his Guide’s cheeks, taste the dried salt there, explore the curve of Blair’s ear. Blair’s hands were roaming Jim’s shirt now, moving over the planes of his chest and belly, and their legs were all tangled up in each other, and Jim hadn’t the first clue where to put his hands, so he just put them down, and that worked out fine, because the hands landed on Blair’s denim-covered waist. Blair seemed to like that, squirming up so the hands slid down to his butt.

Something was digging into Jim’s hip, and he shifted in annoyance, thinking the TV remote was trapped between them on the couch, and it was only when Blair groaned into his mouth and pushed that hardness against him again that Jim realized it was Blair he felt. He froze for a second, his mind trying to work out whether or not this was cause to panic, and his hips twitched against Sandburg’s just to test it again. Yup, Sandburg was definitely hard, and rocked against him, their cocks pressing together through their pants, uncomfortable and scary and delicious all at once.

“Wanna see you,” Blair mumbled, tugging at Jim’s shirt. “Can’t remember what you look like.”

Jim shook his head, his stomach twisting. Necking on the couch was one thing, but nakedness and touching would make it too real. “No,” he said. “Later.”

“There might not be a later,” Blair insisted.

Jim leapt for that opening. “And if there isn’t a later, I don’t want to get hurt,” he said.

“But--”

Jim stood up. “Sandburg. I’m saying no.” He walked over to the kitchen to grab a badly-needed beer.

“I’m sorry,” Blair finally said, and Jim felt like shit for making the kid think it was his fault. “I keep forgetting what it must be like for you. Five-sixths of the time, you’re with someone like me, who doesn’t remember you. Hell, two-thirds of the time I’m a child, and you have to treat me like one, can’t treat me like a lover. You’ve been so patient with me, I shouldn’t make it harder on you.”

Jim didn’t dare turn around, didn’t dare let Blair see the guilt in his eyes. “You didn’t do anything wrong,” he said in a strangled tone. He heard Sandburg stand up and walk slowly closer to him, and Jim held absolutely still, afraid to move, as Blair’s hands slid around his waist and his warm, comfortable weight settled against Jim’s back. Jim leaned against the counter, clutching his beer.

“I know you think I don’t know you, and it’s true, I don’t remember you at all. But that doesn’t mean I don’t know you or care about you,” said Blair. “I know the pain in your voice when you tried to stop me from talking to Stoddard, and when I came home today. No one’s ever hurt when I hurt before, Jim. You’re so patient, teaching me what I need to know to be your partner and guide, forcing me to go slow when I might hurt myself. You make me feel cherished, Jim. I may not know all the details, but I know I love you.”

Jim flinched at that, the way those three words made his heart ache. He hadn’t even known he needed to hear them, but now it seemed like everything they’d endured together, all the times they’d hurt each other and healed each other for five years, it all came down to those three words. And if he told Blair the truth, that they weren’t a couple and he’d never done any of this before and he was scared out of his mind, he’d never hear those three words again. “I love you too, Chief,” he whispered hoarsely.

Blair sighed and relaxed against his back, and then the hands on his front discovered something interesting. “You’re still hard, Jim. Please let me take care of that. Let me take care of you for a change.” When Jim didn’t say anything, didn’t even move, a large, firm hand slid into his pants and cupped his hard-on, roamed down to explore his balls, map him gently and subtly, then pumped and squeezed the shaft.

Jim’s eyes clenched shut, his whole world reduced to that hand on his cock, Blair’s hard ridge pressed against his back, his fist gripping the beer bottle as though it would shatter. It felt like he’d dialed all the way up, though he knew he hadn’t; it had never felt this good before in his life. He heard soft, urgent groans and couldn’t tell if it was his voice or Blair’s, but it must be his, because Blair was murmuring, “That’s it, big guy, give it to me, just let it go…” and then Jim’s vision grayed out and he was spilling all over Blair’s hand, and Blair whispered, “Thank you, Jim. Thank you for trusting me,” and Blair slipped a wet paper towel down Jim’s pants to clean him off, kissed the back of his neck, and left him to his breakdown.

Jim awoke to the sound of Blair’s voice chattering away downstairs. Who was he talking to? He stumbled downstairs and found Blair sitting bare-chested at the kitchen table, leafing through graphs of Jim’s senses and listening to an audiotape of his own fieldnotes. Catching up on the last five years. Good, that meant ‘Charlie’ Blair was in charge; they could go into work. “How’re you doing there, Chief? You do realize that technically you’re talking to yourself.”

Blair grinned. “It’s pretty wild, man.”

“You almost done going through those?”

Blair shook his head. “There’s so much of it.”

“You could take the shortcut, just read the dissertation,” Jim suggested.

Blair looked at him like he was crazy. “And skip all the good stuff?”

“Sorry, forgot who I was talking to. What do you want for breakfast?”

“I don’t know, pancakes?”

“Sorry, don’t have flour. I have your algae shakes, or I could make eggs again.”

Blair made a face. “Algae? I’ll take eggs, man, thanks.”

Jim chuckled, wondering when in the last ten years Blair had become addicted to the foul things. But before he could open the fridge, the phone rang. “Can you get it, Chief?”

“Blair Sandburg,” said Blair. “Yeah, hold on.” He held out the phone to Jim.

“Ellison.”

“Jim? Just got a call from dispatch: a body was found in a chapel on 231 Venice. It sounds like one of the missing girls.”

“We’re on it,” said Jim. “Sorry, Chief, but we’ve got to roll. Besides, you don’t want to have breakfast right before looking at a body.”

“A body? You mean a dead body? Cool.”

No, not cool. But Blair would learn that lesson again soon enough.

Venice Avenue was in a pretty rough district, and they had to cut through the warehouses to get there. In the interest of filling in the gaps, Jim said, “You were living over there when I met you.”

“Really? Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For giving me a home.”

Jim’s throat tightened, and he thwapped Blair on the back of his head. “Come on, Sandburg. Let’s get to work.”

The body was laid out on the altar, draped in a thin, loose weave of white silk, like sparkling cheesecloth. Hillary Peterson, the second kidnapped girl. Jim pulled back the cloth and stared into a face permanently and grotesquely frozen in a terrified grimace. Blair made a strangled sound and ran out of the room. Damn. Should Jim go after him, or get the job done so they could leave?

No, he had to help Blair get a hold of himself, if for no other reason than that he needed Blair to make sure he didn’t zone when he used his senses to look for clues. He extended his hearing and found Blair’s heartbeat, started moving towards it.

“Hey, are you okay?” Jim heard Rafe ask.

“I’m sorry,” said Blair. “You probably think I’m such a wimp, throwing up like that.” A pause. “I’m supposed to be here; I’m with Detective Ellison. I’m BJ. What’s your name?”

BJ. Oh God. Oh no. Jim started running.

“I’m Rafe. We’ve already met. Actually, we’re old friends.”

“Oh. I’m sorry I don’t remember you.”

Jim skidded to a halt and gave Rafe a sharp nod. “Rafe. Sorry about that.”

“No problem. Uh … BJ? was just introducing himself again.”

Jim squeezed Blair’s shoulders and said, “Are you okay? I’m so, so sorry for taking you here. I never would have if I’d known it was you. Why didn’t you tell me this morning?”

“I thought you knew, because you didn’t ask. And then I wanted to see the body and I figured you wouldn’t let me if you knew. I thought it was going to be like a horror movie. It wasn’t. It was awful and she looked so wrong and she was starting to rot…” Blair burst into tears, and Jim hugged him tight.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I saw you reading your notes, and I just thought--” Right. Of course. BJ read voraciously, he’d read The Feminine Mystique for crying out loud, he woke up in a strange room full of books in his own handwriting, of course he was going to read them. “Rafe? Can you take BJ home for me?”

“What! No, Jim, you need me!”

“I need to know you’re okay. Go home, BJ, I’ll handle this.”

“No. I’m staying.” Christ, Blair even looked like a kid, his jaw jutting out, his arms crossed.

“BJ, I don’t have time for this. I’m going to be handling a dead body, and to help me you’d have to be right next to me, talking me through it. So go home.”

Blair glared at him, and then swallowed and rubbed his mouth, still gray from throwing up. “I’m not leaving you.”

Jim exchanged a look with Rafe. No kid should have to see a dead body. Jim knew from his own experience how traumatic it could be. But the damage was done, might as well not traumatize the kid for nothing. “Fine. But you have any more problems and you go straight back.”

They walked back together and Jim pulled the cloth aside. “Samite,” Blair murmured.

“What?” Jim asked.

“The cloth,” said Blair, not looking at the body. “Like King Arthur.”

“BJ, what the hell are you talking about?”

“The Holy Grail was wrapped in samite. You use it to wrap -- what’s it called -- consecrated things.”

“So he’s saying she’s holy?” Jim asked.

Blair shrugged and studied his feet.

“All right,” said Jim. “Let’s move on.” The body had been badly mangled: both arms dislocated, hands and feet shattered, bruises and chafe marks at the wrists and ankles. He examined her fingernails, no traces of anything. “I see something on her legs,” said Jim. He pushed her thighs apart while Blair whimpered behind him, and found what he was looking for: tiny dots and scratches on her inner thighs. “Someone injected her over and over with a needle. I’ll have to have the lab check her for drugs. You okay, Chief?”

“Yeah,” he said, which sounded a lot like ‘Hell, no,’ but Jim wasn’t going to argue the point. “Okay, um, picture your dials, can you do that? And dial up smell. Can you dial it up without smelling the rot?”

“Yeah, Chief, I can do that.” Jim obediently dialed up, and caught an odd, horribly familiar scent.

“…me? Come back, Jim. Please come back, you’re scaring me.” Blair’s hand rubbed his back reassuringly despite the edge of panic in his voice.

“I’m here, Chief,” Jim blinked and shook it off.

“You zoned,” said Blair. “Don’t do that.”

“Sorry. Let’s pack it up, BJ. I’ve got enough.”

Blair was only too happy to comply.

Jim drove them back to the station, glancing over at Blair when he turned off the engine. “BJ?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m sorry you had to see that. But you did good today. You should be proud of yourself.”

Blair unbuckled his seatbelt and got out, not looking at Jim. “I know I screwed up, man, I’m sorry. You don’t have to lie to make me feel better.”

“Chief, I’m not lying.”

“I threw up! And then you zoned, and I tried to do what the notes said, but it took forever before you woke up. I’m sorry.”

He hurried off to the elevator, and Jim ran to catch up with him. “Listen to me, BJ. I saw someone die when I was your age, and I know how awful it can be. You had every right to be upset. But you came back in with me, and you kept your head, even when I zoned. Trust me, I would have zoned no matter what, but if you hadn’t been there, I wouldn’t have come out of it for a long time, maybe even for hours. You did great, partner.” He could see his words taking the weight off Blair’s shoulders, adding a hint of his former joy to his expression. “Now, let’s go brief Simon on what we found.”

Simon was in his office, and Jim knocked and pointed Blair to a seat before sitting down himself. “The girl was tortured, Simon. And she was injected with something; there are needle marks all over her inner thighs.”

“Is it possible she was a junkie or a diabetic, or is it definitely our guy?”

“Oh, it’s our guy, all right,” said Jim. “The marks are all recent, about a week old. But that’s not what killed her. He drowned her, Simon. He drowned her in the fountain at Rainier.”

Simon frowned and his gaze flicked to Blair. “Are you sure?” he asked.

“I smelled the water in her lungs, Simon, do you really think I could make a mistake on that?” He shook his head, not wanting to get into this in front of Sandburg, whether or not the kid remembered. “Chief, tell Simon about that thing with the cloth.”

“The samite? It’s this fabric from the Middle Ages, made out of silk with threads of silver or gold. That’s how I recognized it, from the sparkle. The Holy Grail legends talk about it, and Chaucer mentions it a couple of times, wrapping things that are holy or really special, or worn as clothing by the Roman Gods.”

“So, samite plus a body in a church, maybe our killer sees it as a sacrifice or offering?” Simon chewed his cigar. “Great, we’ve got a religious nut on our hands. How rare is this samite stuff? Is there any way to track distributors?”

Blair shrugged and curled up in his seat, a pose so childish Jim winced, wondering whether Simon would detect how young Blair was and throw a fit. “Pretty rare even in the Middle Ages. I don’t know if the Catholic Church even uses it. But the stuff we saw was pretty coarse weave; I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s making it himself. Naomi weaves better than that, and believe me, that’s saying something.”

“So we could track people buying raw silk,” Jim suggested.

“Good work, you two,” said Simon. “Let’s get this one before any more bodies hit the deck, all right?” He was interrupted by the phone on his desk, and his expression soured as he listened to the person on the other end. “We’ve got another missing girl,” he said. “Rainier again. You know the drill; check the scene, interview friends and roommates--”

“I can’t, Simon,” said Jim, wishing desperately that he had Blair’s gift of obfuscation. He was going to have to do some Sandburg-worthy tap-dancing to get BJ home without either hurting the kid’s feelings or making Simon doubt Blair’s confidence. “I zoned pretty badly earlier today; I think something’s going on with the senses. We need to figure out what’s wrong now if I’m going to be any good later down the road.”

Simon frowned, but said, “Fine, I’ll get Taggart to do the interviews, but I want you to walk the scene as soon as you’re back up to speed. You take care of him, Sandburg.”

“Yes, sir.”

Jim and Blair drove home in silence, exhausted by the day. Jim stopped off at Wonderburger to grab dinner, and whether because at this age he wasn’t a health nut or he was too traumatized to care, Blair didn’t object. To maintain the charade, Jim broke one of his cardinal rules and actually suggested tests, which made BJ light up like a Christmas tree. The kid had picked up on what Jim had said about the fountain at Rainier, and told Jim to stay put while he ran out of the loft. It took a supreme act of will not to run after him, but the kid came back in a few minutes with five identical plastic cups of water and asked Jim to see if he could tell what the source of each was. One was so stale with grease that it had clearly been taken from the kitchen of the diner down the block, another had the rusty tang of a garden hose, and one tasted so flat and porcelain-ish that Jim nearly took the kid’s head off before BJ convinced him it was from the porcelain water fountain by the park, not a toilet.

BJ got tired early and said he was going to bed, and Jim tucked him in even though they both agreed he was too old for that. “In the interest of science, BJ,” said Jim, “what was the first thing you remember seeing this morning?”

Blair frowned and thought about it. “That carving,” he said, pointing to a little wooden fetish on his desk. “Hank gave it to me a few months ago; he’s an anthropologist. It’s from Africa,” he said proudly. “Hank is so cool.” He paused. “Man, it’s hard to believe that was twenty years ago. Hank’s got to be like a million years old now.”

“Must be,” Jim agreed. “Good night, BJ.” He turned off the light, switched on the television and waited. When he heard BJ’s breathing turn deep and even, he crept back into Blair’s room, slipped the case files back onto the bed, and took the fetish from the desk. “I’m sorry, BJ,” he whispered. “You’re an amazing kid, but this is no place for a kid.” He closed the door, took the fetish upstairs, and slipped it under his bed.

The phone woke Jim, but he heard Blair pick it up downstairs before he could grab it. “Hello? Oh, hi. Uh, thanks. Another…?” Jim slipped on sweatpants and headed downstairs. “Sure. I’ll tell him when he wakes up. No problem.”

“What’s no problem?” Jim asked.

Blair looked up from the melon he was chopping. “Hey, man. That was Simon. He said they’ve found another body -- how many are there so far? -- and said good work on the samite. He wants us down at Bloch’s Mill as soon as possible, and forget about Rainier for now. Samite? What’s with the samite?”

“That depends,” said Jim. “Which one are you?”

“Dude, that question is going to get really irritating and confusing after a while. I mean, what happens a year from now? Are you going to upgrade us all a year, or count us as being stuck at whatever age we were when we first woke up?” He smacked his hand on the counter and got back to whacking the melon. “And how crazy is it to be talking about myself in plural?” Before Jim could answer, he said, “You’re a Sentinel. I’m a detective, ever since I screwed up and let the cat out of the bag. Judging by the date on the newspaper, I’m missing ten days, last thing I remember was waking up on the couch for a few seconds and you shutting me down again.” He took a deep breath to ground himself and smiled at Jim. “Sorry for sniping at you like that, it’s just scary losing all that time. So what’s happened?”

Jim filled him in on the case while he cooked some oatmeal to go with the melon and tea Blair had made. Blair smiled at the mention of samite. “That’s lucky; I don’t know if I would have remembered that. I pretty much lost interest in King Arthur and the Holy Grail when I latched onto Burton. Probably the best place to start looking would be craft and specialty shops, after we see the second body.”

The second body was nothing like the first. Dumped in the back room of a sawmill, it had decayed for several days, and Jim had to dial smell down to almost zero. One hand was smashed, there was more chafing at the wrists and ankles, needle marks on the inner thighs, and Jim caught the faint scent of the fountain, but the final cause of death here was strangulation, not drowning. Charlene Davis, who had been kidnapped the earliest, had been garroted, the ligature offset by a large indentation at the center of her neck.

This time, at least, Jim was able to spot the vestiges of boot prints in the sawdust, prints which matched those he had detected on campus.

Back at the station, Blair pinned up the pictures of the four girls and marked on a map where and when each had been taken, and where the two corpses had been found. “Sorry if I’m repeating myself, I know we’ve been working on this case for a week, but since I don’t remember any of it, I want to make sure I’m not missing anything that wasn’t in the case file. Okay, so both bodies were found in or around the warehouse district. Charlene lived near there; I remember because I was a designated driver after a party and she commented that I was the only one who could find my way around there at night.”

“Did you know her, Chief?”

Blair shook his head. “Just met her that one time. Which isn’t surprising; the file says she was a med student, and the hard and soft sciences don’t mix well at Rainier. Actually, this is interesting: Melissa Cutler was a med student too, and Joanne Harding was ABD in physics. Hillary Peterson wasn’t, though; she was a psych major.”

“Hard and soft sciences?” Jim asked.

“Yeah,” said Blair. “Hard sciences are things that can be quantified and proven: medicine, physics, engineering. Soft sciences are things like psychology, sociology, and anthropology, things that deal with ideas and emotions more than physical evidence. There’s only so much funding to go around, so they call us wishy-washy and point out that our disciplines completely reverse their positions every ten years. We point out that medicine and physics are calling the kettle black when it comes to reversing their positions, and that whereas Rainier is never going to compete with Johns Hopkins or Princeton for medicine or physics, they could have the best anthro or psych department in the country if they gave us more money. It gets pretty ugly around here in February, when the fundraising season kicks off, let me tell you.”

Jim scowled at the board. “So the women probably don’t know each other or don’t like each other. What’s the connection? Is it just the way they look?” He studied the map. “It’s weird, when you think about it,” he said.

“What?”

“The logistics. The two girls we’ve found were tortured over several days. Of the four, three were taken on campus, and the one I could track was dragged from the student center to the parking lot, not going anywhere near the fountain, even though drowning or soaking the women in the fountain seems to be important to this guy. That means he kidnaps them, takes them somewhere to hurt them, takes them back to campus to drown them in the fountain, then takes them all the way across town to the warehouse district to finish them off and dump the bodies. That’s a lot of transportation, really risky.” He turned to Blair. “What’s so important about that fountain? All I can think of is Alex.”

Blair scratched his head, his hand freezing as it brushed the scar, then gingerly continuing on its way. Then he brightened. “Freshmen! They dunk the freshmen science majors! It’s a hazing they do every year, Jim, I’m sure that’s what this guy is latching onto. He was probably dunked himself at one point. Maybe it made him feel helpless? Being held down like that?”

“We need to interview the teachers, check their classmates, see if there’s any connection,” said Jim. “I’ll handle that end.”

“I’m not made of glass, Jim,” said Blair quietly. “It’s been over a year since the diss, I can handle it.”

Jim shook his head. “Interviewing is going to take more than one day. You can handle it, maybe, but your younger selves are just going to get hurt.”

“They won’t be,” said Blair grimly. “It’ll be me tomorrow.”

Jim wondered how he could be so sure of that, but before he could ask, Tracy came up with the lab results. Both bodies tested clean for drugs; the needle marks on their legs were done with a sewing needle or a pin, not a hypodermic.

“Why would he stab them with a pin?” Jim wondered.

“It sounds familiar, I just can’t remember where I’ve heard of it,” said Blair. “Oh man, that’s going to drive me crazy.”

“Crazier,” Jim corrected with a chuckle. “Come on, let’s go.”

Aside from Hillary and Charlene, none of the girls had been friends. Charlene Davis and Melissa Cutler actively hated each other, Charlene having beaten Melissa out of a match she wanted.

“A match?” Jim asked.

“Med students get matched with fellowship programs all around the country,” one of Charlene’s professors had explained. “It’s a very tightly-run system, and the rest of your career can ride on whether you were accepted into your top choice or not. A good third of med students either have to change their specialty or quit school altogether if they can’t get into a good program.”

“What about psych students or physics students,” Jim asked. “Do they have anything similar?”

“Not really. Psychology grads can go into virtually any counseling context: retreat centers, marital counseling, addiction centers, they crop up like weeds. But there are a limited number of places that are equipped to do experimental transplants or work with nanotechnology. Either you get into your top choice or you resign yourself to not working with your chosen interest, ever.”

It sounded crazy to Jim, but a glance at Blair told him this was old news to him. “What spot were Charlene and Melissa both gunning for?” Blair asked.

“Neurochemistry at Johns Hopkins,” said the professor.

“Were there any other people who wanted that spot?” Blair asked.

“Quite a few, I’d imagine,” said the professor. “The dean’s office will have the list. But others might have it down as their second or third choice. You could have ten or fifteen people.”

“Thank you,” said Jim. “You’ve been very helpful.”

The list only had eight people, including the two victims, but five of them had it down as their first choice. “That’s weird,” said Jim, “I would have thought the numbers would go up for second and third choice, not down.”

“It’s one of the top programs in the country,” Blair explained. “Either you want it so bad it hurts, or you know you’re not going to get in. It’s not a back-up plan. Of course, the killer could be someone from a more prestigious school who just got pissed that the match went to a lowly Rainier student.”

“Yeah, but then he’d only be after Charlene,” Jim returned. “There would be no reason to take Melissa, and certainly no reason to take the other two girls. No, I think we’re dealing with someone on campus, probably one of the other three top contenders for this Johns Hopkins spot. If we can tie one of those three to the other two girls…”

“Let’s go cross-match their class transcripts,” said Blair.

“You’ve got a theory?” Jim asked.

“Class schedules going back to undergraduate years should tell us if they’ve ever had a class together. Most Rainier students hook up with classmates; there aren’t a lot of hobby clubs and they’re too shy to just go up to someone in the student center.”

“Bet you never had that problem, huh, Chief?” Jim joked, before remembering what he now knew about Sandburg. “Chief? Can I ask you something?”

“Yeah?”

“You’ve always joked about how you’d screw anything that moved, especially when you first moved in, but you don’t actually go on that many dates. And you never date a woman more than a couple of times.”

Blair’s heart rate sped up.

“I mean, what I’m saying is,” Jim floundered. How do you tell your best friend of five years that he gave you a hand job he doesn’t remember, and ask if he wants to do it again? “You know you can tell me anything, right? You know I wouldn’t judge you?”

“Oh man,” said Blair. “Please tell me my other selves haven’t been making you uncomfortable.”

“No, not uncomfortable, just, well, yeah--”

“Look, I went through an experimental phase when I hit college so young, tried on a lot of identities, but that’s all it was, a phase. Trust me, man, you’re not my type. You’ve got nothing to worry about.”

That stung, and Jim couldn’t think of anything to say to that. And what if Blair was right? The younger Blair thought they were in a relationship because of something Jim had said, but was he actually attracted to Jim? The soft ‘I love you’ of the night before suddenly soured Jim’s stomach. Had Sandburg just been going along with what he thought was expected of him? Giving Jim a little payment for his trouble?

The thought of sitting alone with Sandburg, combing through files, suddenly seemed hellish. “I think we should split up and interview the suspects first,” Jim growled. “It’ll save us time poking through years-worth of files.”

“No, just wait here,” said Blair. He raced off to a little gray building on the left. Five minutes later he came out beaming with a thin sheaf of papers clutched in one hand. “It’s all on computer, has to be easy to print out for school and job applications. One page per victim or suspect, easy to cross-check.”

“I said we’d interview the suspects first, Sandburg!” said Jim. “I didn’t want to deal with that now!”

“Yeah, but how are you going to find them to interview them without their class schedules?” Blair reasoned.

Jim snarled and grabbed the lists from Sandburg. The trouble was, the match required someone with a heavy background in both medicine and psychology; pretty much everyone had classes together. None of the suspects could be dismissed. At least Jim had all the breathing room he could ask for; most of the suspects insisted Blair leave the room before they would talk. By now, Sandburg was just shrugging it off and dealing with it, making Jim feel like a total jerk for being angry with him before. Blair had sacrificed so much for him, proven his loyalty and love so many times over the years. The truth was, he was questioning Blair’s reasons for sleeping with him because it was easier to cast aspersions on Blair’s motives and shut him out than to confront the fact that he couldn’t stop thinking about Blair’s knowing hand on his cock, couldn’t help feeling disloyal every time he wished lover-Blair was here today instead of partner-Blair, his friend of five years.

This close to finals, studying was the alibi du jour, which meant anyone who hadn’t been with a confirmed study group had no real proof of their stories. Of those four, one was a confined to a wheelchair, which left three suspects, all of whom had neurochemistry as a first choice. Of these, the first suspect, Ian Jacobs, completely stonewalled, glaring at Blair the whole time like he had just crawled out from under a rock. It felt like pulling teeth just to get him to admit that he’d been out with friends that night, witnesses who could attest to his whereabouts.

The second suspect, Todd Parker, lived in a clean, tidy dorm room, a joy for Jim’s harried senses. A trumpet piece by Vivaldi played softly in the CD player. A wide bookshelf took up one wall with textbooks and hardcovers not just on biology and psych, but on history, philosophy, and religion. “This is about the missing girls, right?” he asked, ushering them in.

“Do you want me to leave?” Blair asked automatically.

Todd waved him inside. “Please. You’ve been in the student newspaper how many times since I’ve been here, fighting for professors who were denied tenure, or protesting to get funding and backing for student groups the administration blacklisted? And that was before you started defusing bombs and freeing hostages. It’s not your fault that bitch Edwards has a bug up her butt.”

Jim rubbed his partner’s back, glad for Blair’s sudden release of tension and frustration, but kept his own emotions in check. Todd was a suspect, after all, with motivation to get on their good sides. “What can you tell us about your relationship with the missing girls?”

“Relationship?” Todd asked. Jim’s hand on Blair’s arm stopped him from clarifying the statement. Let Todd make of it what he would.

“Not much of what you’d call a relationship,” said Todd. “I mean, I knew them, in a ‘say hi in the halls’ kind of way, but we didn’t hang out together or anything.”

“Come on,” said Jim, “you took classes with Melissa and Charlene all the way back to sophomore year. You really expect me to believe that in six years you never had a study session with them, never had to borrow their notes, never worked a shift with them on rounds?”

Todd laughed. “Detective, hospital interns go 24 or sometimes as long as 48 hours without sleep, doing shitty jobs under high pressure. I’ve got better things to do with my energy on rounds than to chat up women. And yeah, I probably did have classes with them as an undergrad, but those classes have as many as a hundred students; I had my friends, they had theirs, and never the twain shall meet.”

“That’s true for organic chem.,” said Blair, “But you’re telling me you went a whole semester of neurophysiology without talking to two of the other five students?”

“I talked to Melissa a little, but mostly I hung out with Chris and Dean. No one talked to Charlene, I hate to slam her because she’s dead, but she was a real bitch.”

“What makes you say that?” Jim asked.

Todd shrugged. “She just, I don’t know, we’d ask her if she wanted to study with us and she’d say no, but she was using this girl in the psych department to get the inside track on a lot of stuff. Dean and Melissa got really pissed off at her for that. Pretty much the only thing they agreed on anymore.” He looked at the clock. “Look, man, if you need any more help, tell me, but I’m going to be late to class.”

“We’ll be in touch if we need anything. Don’t leave town,” said Jim.

“Right before finals? Are you kidding?” asked Todd, flashing a grin as he raced off to class.

“One more to go,” said Blair, checking the sheaf of papers. “Dean Hammer.” He chewed his lip as they walked to Dean’s dorm. “Todd said Dean and Melissa don’t agree on anything anymore.”

“You’re thinking bad breakup, Chief?”

“Well, if it’s true, and he already hated Charlene, and it sounds like he had reason to resent Hillary…”

“Sounds good, Chief. Just don’t count your theories before they’re hatched.”

Dean Hammer’s room made Blair’s look spotless. Knee-high jumbles of papers buttressed the legs of the bed, and a half-dozen chess sets decorated every available surface, each board set in some elaborate endgame. Marilyn Manson growled softly from the stereo.

“Can I help you?” he asked Jim, and then his eyes narrowed as he caught sight of Blair. “Blair Sandburg. Didn’t they kick your ass out? What are you doing here?”

“Cascade PD,” said Blair, flashing his badge at the same moment as Jim. “We just want to ask you some questions--”

Dean’s heart started slamming in his chest, and when he jabbed a finger in Blair’s direction, Jim caught a whiff of sweat. “No way,” said Dean. “I’m not going to have a lying scumbag like you taking any sort of statement from me.”

“Mr. Hammer,” said Jim, “we’ve been told you had a relationship with the missing girls--”

“Told? By whom?”

“We can’t tell you that at this point.”

“A man’s got a right to face his accusers, doesn’t he? Unless this is all some sort of entrapment. That’s illegal, you know, not that lying to get what you want would stop you.”

“Tell me about your relationship with Melissa Cutler,” said Blair.

“I don’t have to tell you anything. I know my rights.”

“Your rights?” asked Jim. “Miranda rights only apply if we accuse you of a crime. No one’s accusing you, yet, but the way you’re gunning for obstruction of justice, I’d be happy to change that.”

Dean’s jaw tensed, but he said nothing, his unhappy gaze shifting between Blair and Jim.

“Fine,” said Jim. “I’m booking you on obstruction, and they’ll sort it out down at the station. You have the right to remain silent--”

“In that case, I want a lawyer. And I’m not talking to either of you dirty cops.”

Jim glowered, scenting Blair’s quiet fury and disgust, but continued, “--anything you say can and will be held against you…”

That night, Blair stayed up late surfing the web for information about neurosurgery and treatment facilities, and Jim blinked awake when he heard Blair’s go-to-sleep alarm chime at two in the morning and the sharp intake of breath downstairs that indicated the sound had woken an already-dozing Blair. Damn, the kid had barely slept; if a new personality had emerged, he’d be adamantly against getting any sleep tonight. “Do I have to come down there and drag you to bed?” he called, already stirring to do just that.

“Let me just shut down the computer,” said Blair.

“Sandburg. Bed. Now.” said Jim. He heard the heartbeat downstairs accelerate a little.

“Man, you are pushy.” Bare feet softly plodded up the stairs, and Jim buried his head in a pillow, mourning the sleepless night to come. Sandburg needed to talk. So what else was new?

He waited for Blair to start talking about the case, or his condition, or the history of black market tulips, but instead the bed shifted under new weight and a very naked Sandburg wrapped himself around Jim. “One of us is overdressed for this,” said Blair, his fingers gently running along the waistband of Jim’s boxers.

Jim’s mouth was suddenly very dry, but despite his nervousness, he found himself scooting out of his boxers and rolling over to face Blair. The younger man leaned forward to kiss him, but Jim pushed Blair back against the bed. “Wait,” Jim croaked. “You don’t have to do this.”

Blair smiled. “I know I don’t have to. I want to.”

He started to move again, but Jim held him still. “No. If we’re going to do this, I’m driving.” He leaned over and kissed Blair softly on the mouth, ran a trembling hand over the soft, crinkly hair on Blair’s chest, the little treasure trail down Blair’s belly. Blair lay back and watched him with those luminous blue eyes, his hand rising to stroke Jim’s chest, fingertips tracing loop-de-loops over his nipples and roaming the hills and valleys where muscle met bone. Mapping him. Learning him. Christ, they’d only been in bed a matter of minutes and already Blair was racing ahead of the learning curve. Jim grabbed the hand and bent to lick and nibble those curious fingertips, tasting his Guide. Underneath the sharp saltiness of the day was a subtler flavor, something more essentially ‘Blair’.

A little voice in the back of his head was screaming that crinkly chest hair against his mouth was not the natural order of things, but it was overwhelmed by the marvelous texture of Blair’s nipple between his teeth. Oh, this part worked just like a woman. This was a good detour, and Jim made the most of it, biting and sucking as Blair arched off the bed, begging, urging, his hands trying to pull Jim closer and direct him downwards all at once.

Jim felt like an over-tuned guitar string, desire vibrating down his spine so tightly it felt like something was going to snap inside him. He let Blair’s hands guide him, and when he opened his eyes he was face-to-groin with Blair’s erection, thinking belatedly that these things looked a hell of a lot bigger from this angle.

Blair seemed to notice the moment had derailed, because he sat up a little and said, “We don’t do that?”

Jim blinked in confusion, because Blair seemed to be implying that it was pretty normal for a gay couple to have things they just didn’t do, but since no straight relationship Jim had ever been in had worked that way, Jim wasn’t sure if it was a trick question. “We haven’t done that yet,” he temporized, hoping that was the right answer.

It seemed to be, because Blair just opened the drawer of the bedside table and pulled out a condom and a little pump bottle of spermicidal lube left from before the divorce. “Okay, clearly I’ve got to stop letting you shop for lube at the drugstore. Note to self: buy Wet when you’re awake next.” He handed the condom to Jim. “Do you stretch me?” he asked, “Or should I do it myself?”

Stretch? Jim was waaay out of his depth here. “You do it,” he guessed, “I’ll, uh, watch.”

Blair shot him a very odd look, but the corners of his mouth tugged into a smile. He squirmed around until he was propped up a little on the pillows and hiked his ankles up next to his hips, offering himself trustingly to Jim’s gaze. His cock was curved up against his belly, making shiny little patterns there as he moved. He squeezed some lube onto his fingers and slid one inside himself, rocking his hips as he moved the finger in and out. Jim watched, his mouth dry, as Blair slipped in a second finger and groaned a little. “So tight, Jim. Man, I love this part. Are you watching me? Do you like what you see?”

“Mm-hm,” Jim managed, transfixed by the sight of that narrow passage hungrily tensing around Blair’s slick digits. In another few minutes, that was going to be him moving in and out of his Guide. He was so hard it hurt, and it looked like Blair was close to the edge himself, biting his lip and tossing his head as a third finger conspired to tease his entrance.

“Jim, please, I need it, need you,” Blair started begging, and Jim scrambled to tear open the wrapper and sheathe himself before leaning over to push himself inside. God, it was tight! It almost hurt, this hot little vise undulating around his cock, and his hips snapped instinctively, drawing a sweet moan from Blair, who hitched his legs up over Jim’s shoulders, letting Jim thrust even deeper into that perfect cavern.

Jim had his eyes clenched shut, losing himself in the sensation, trying not to think too hard about what he was doing out of fear that he’d panic and lose his nerve. The body under him felt so good, rocking up urgently to meet his thrusts, pulling him closer and closer to the edge…

“Jim.” The voice broke through his thoughts. “Jim, open your eyes. I want to see you.”

Jim shook his head, his eyes closed, his elbows locked, his whole body given over to this thing, this raw animal need inside him.

“Jim, please, I need to know you want this with me. I need to know you’re here.” The voice was urgent, shaky, and Jim remembered how Blair’s last boyfriend had treated him. No one should treat Blair that way, he deserved so much better…

Jim forced his eyes open to find Blair’s whole body arching up against him, beautiful and golden and sweaty, the scent of him, the little noises wrung from his throat with every movement, the dazzling blue eyes that locked with his. It was too much, he was drowning in sensation. “Blair, l-love, love you,” he stuttered, thrusting down to capture Blair’s mouth for a taste. The new angle must have hit something important, because all of a sudden Blair was crying against Jim’s mouth, his whole body spasming, milking Jim as hot, sticky seed flooded their chests, and with one more thrust, Jim came deep inside his Guide.

Blair slipped into sleep almost immediately; the orgasm had drained what little energy he’d had left. Jim watched him sleep, feeling his erection slowly subside until he slipped out of Blair’s body. God, it had felt so amazingly good while it was going on, and now that it was over, he was terrified. This beautiful, pushy man had willfully rearranged Jim’s life from day one; why should Jim be surprised to find the man in his bed? Except this wasn’t Blair, not completely. This was a younger, more fragile Blair, less scarred by life, but also less tempered by it. This wasn’t the man who had thought up all those tests, run through gunfire and jumped out of planes and bullied Jim whenever the larger man refused to confront his fears. But he could be, Jim thought as he drifted off to sleep with his arms around that precious, hairy body. If I give him time. Man, I wish I could talk to Sandburg, my Sandburg, about this. I could sure use his help with this one.

Jim woke up, shivering with chill, to discover all the blankets and pillows were gone. Not stolen by a bed hog, actually gone. His eyes creaked open to discover Blair on the far side of the loft platform, cheerfully making a pillow fort. Jim groaned and rolled over, then went downstairs to make pancakes.

Over breakfast, Jim established that five-year-old Blair, having grown up on communes, didn’t think much one way or the other about waking up in beds with other people of varying ages, but that, thank God, none of them ever touched his private places. After calling a few friends, all of whom were too busy to take care of a man-child today, Jim reluctantly settled him in front of the TV with some random cartoons playing, gave him his cell phone number and the number for Major Crimes, and went off to work, where he discovered Dean Hammer had refused to crack under Henri Brown’s interrogation, just kept insisting he didn’t kidnap his ex-girlfriend or anyone else, and he didn’t know who did. Since all the evidence they had was circumstantial, all they could do was let him go with a strong warning not to leave town.

After an exhausting day with no leads, during which time Jim was proud that he only called five times to check on Blair, Jim headed home with a big, heavenly-smelling sack from Wonderburger, learned more than he ever wanted to know about Barney the Dinosaur, and put Blair to bed downstairs. Then he carefully draped the case files on Blair’s bed, cleaned the disaster area that was his bedroom, and changed the sheets to something that would remind Blair less of a commune for next time.

Over the next few days, Jim experimented with bringing case files up to his bedroom and spreading them around after Blair fell asleep in sated exhaustion. This worked out pretty successfully, which meant some enthusiastic mornings.

But on the work front, things were going less well.

“We’ve got a problem, Jim,” said Simon. “The FBI’s screaming to get their hands on this case; they say you’re taking too long.”

“Too long? Simon, we’re busting our asses--”

“I know, Jim; you and the kid are doing a bang-up job. But the Bureau wants their own guy looking things over, dotting our ‘t’s, crossing our ‘i’s, and generally making a nuisance of himself.”

“Considering what happened to their last profiler, you’d think they’d reconsider sticking their noses in our cases,” said Jim, remembering the profiler who had never even made it in the building before Lash had murdered and replaced him.

“Just thought I’d warn you that you were going to get your toes stepped on,” said Simon. He glanced out at the bullpen, where Blair was cheerfully arguing with Megan. “You’ve worked miracles with that kid, let me tell you,” he said. “I figured one week would be enough to show you things couldn’t go back to the way they were, that you couldn’t just pretend things were going to be fine. You sure showed me.”

Jim smiled, his heart tugging at the sight of his lover. “Thanks, Simon.”

His eyes slid open, and the blurry pink shape in front of him resolved itself into the scar where Zeller’s bullet had punched through Jim’s leg. What was he doing face to flank with Jim’s leg, and how did he get in Jim’s bed? And where the hell were his clothes?

Blair leaned over the side of the bed and saw his jeans and shirt in a pile on the floor, but where was his underwear? He ducked his head under the bed to see if he could spot a pair of Blair-sized boxers, not that Jim’s boxers would ever be somewhere so untidy as under the bed, and spotted something familiar peeking out of the top of a little cardboard box.

Careful not to disturb the Sentinel and former Army Ranger beside him, Blair used his meditation training to keep his heart as calm as his movements as he slipped out from under the covers and knelt to pull the little figurine out of the box. It was followed by a set of Jim’s pillowcases, a picture of Naomi, some fishing tackle, a few mementos Blair had saved from his travels, and one last item, a photo in an ebony frame.

Megan looked up from the mountain of paperwork on her desk to find Blair standing over her, subtly hugging himself. “Sandy? What’s going on? Where’s Jim?”

“Can we go somewhere and talk?” he begged in a whisper.

Megan nodded. “Sure, Sandy, hold on.” She scribbled a note in case anyone came looking for her and guided the young detective downstairs and across the street to Starbucks. “What’s wrong?”

Blair clutched his steaming cup in an effort to control his shaking. “He’s turned the loft into a Skinner box.”

“A what?”

“I was a psych major, all right? Behavioral psych? A Skinner box is a controlled environment that floods the subject with stimulus to provoke a set response, and ruthlessly gets rid of anything that takes away from that response.” The cup sloshed over Blair’s fingers, and he made a small cry, setting down the cup to suck his burnt and shaking fingers. “He’s got a box full of my stuff hidden under his bed. And I was on top of it. I mean, that’s rape, right? Because you and I both know I wasn’t sleeping with him b-before…”

Megan covered Blair’s hands with her own, steadied them. “Sandy, I don’t know if you remember this, but you’re in the middle of a messy case. Jim’s probably just trying to make sure the littler Blairs are out of harm’s way.”

Blair reached into his backpack and pulled out a photo taken at Blair’s graduation, of Jim and Blair grinning and holding out their badges, official partners at last. A photo Jim kept by his bed. “If that’s true, can you tell me what this was doing in the box?”

Megan stared at the picture, half-formed platitudes dying stillborn on her tongue. “Oh, Sandy.” She reached out and clutched his shoulder, frightened as he just sort of crumpled in on himself and started crying.

“I’m so scared, Megan. If I can’t trust Jim, I don’t know what’s left.”

“You can trust me,” she said firmly. “Come on, mate, let’s go to my place and sort this out.”

It took a couple of hours to get Blair calmed down and feeling somewhat less shaky. Megan couldn’t even conceive of what he was going through. How could Jim do that to his best friend, completely screw with his sense of reality like that? How could he sleep with Sandy without really getting his consent? Was consent even possible in a case like this? Because Jim had clearly had sex with Sandy, from what little Sandy was able to piece together. The poor kid was completely shattered, scared and angry and ready to snap. Megan was ready to tear Jim a new one.

A call came through on her cell, and Megan snarled at the caller ID box before hitting the button and snarling, “Jim.”

“Megan?” Jim sounded frantic. “Have you seen Blair?”

“He doesn’t want to see you,” she said. “You’ve got a hell of a lot of explaining to do, mate.”

There was a sharp, indrawn breath on the other end of the line. “Damn. I think I can guess. Is he okay? Was he … traumatized?”

Megan put the cell down on the charger and hit the speaker button so Sandy could hear. “I should think so,” she growled. “What the hell were you thinking, taking him to bed?”

“I didn’t take him to bed, Connor, he took me! All I did was say yes, not that it’s any of your business.”

“Sandy’s my friend; that makes it my business,” she said. “And that’s not all you did. You’re screwing with his mind, switching what age wakes up for your convenience. How can you play with him like that? Your best friend?”

“Just tell me what age he was when he woke up,” Jim pleaded. “Nine? Twelve? Three? Just tell me how bad the damage is.”

“He was thirty,” said Megan, just before Sandy’s hand shot out to cut the connection.

“I didn’t want him to know that,” he yelled at her. “Now he’s never going to let me wake up again!”

“I won’t let him do that to you, Sandy,” she promised. “You can stay here--”

“I don’t want to stay with anyone! I can’t trust anyone!”

“You can’t stay by yourself,” she reasoned. “What if you wake up and don’t know who you are? How can you cope as a six-year-old waking up alone in a strange city?”

His eyes swam with tears, and he hugged his knees to his chest. “How could he do this to me? How could he do this to me?”

Megan didn’t have any answers. She reached out for him, and he yelled “No,” and shoved her away, running for the door. By the time she had the presence of mind to follow him, he was gone.

The next day, Jim and Blair came in to work together, happy and chummy. Megan didn’t say a word.

A few days later, Jim was just coming into Major Crimes when a heated argument in Simon's office set off his internal alarms. It wasn’t the raised voices that concerned him; it was the scents. Simon never smelled upset when he was chewing someone out. Something was wrong.

“Absolutely not!” yelled Simon.

“Sir?” Jim asked, tapping on the doorframe.

The man Simon had been yelling at turned and scowled at Jim. “Detective Ellison, right? Where’s your partner?”

“He couldn’t come in today,” said Jim. “What is this?”

“Detective Ellison, can you confirm your partner’s whereabouts on Thursday the 20th at about eleven PM, or two the following morning?”

“The missing girls? Captain, what the hell is this? Who is this joker?”

“Dr. Peter Melling, Forensic profiler. I’m with the FBI. Your partner recently suffered brain damage as a result of a bullet to the head, is that correct?”

“Yes, but--”

“According to the medical report, the damage makes him relive past experiences as though they were still ongoing, like a broken record, and yet he was cleared for active duty as soon as he got out of the hospital? Must have been quite a strain.”

“Sandburg is up to it,” Jim maintained.

“Mm. As I recall from the news a year ago, Blair Sandburg was publicly disgraced, expelled from the University’s school of applied science, more specifically from their anthropology division.”

“Sandburg handled it. Even at the time, he was upset but he dealt with it and moved on. If you’re arguing some sort of repressed anger coming back, you’re barking up the wrong tree.”

Melling nodded. “Looking through his file, I noticed an odd discrepancy. Sandburg had a rather extensive childhood psychiatric record mentioned on his insurance forms, and yet after he was kidnapped by the serial killer David Lash, who abducted people to steal their identities, he never sought treatment. Is that correct?”

“He handled it just fine,” Jim growled, remembering a couple of weeks of nightmares and insomnia that had faded quickly. “Sandburg is not a killer.”

“Sandburg wasn’t a killer,” said Melling. “But in his current state of diminished capacity -- no, hear me out! The girls were all small, curly-haired brunettes, all science majors of one stripe or another. They were all tied up, as Sandburg was tied, injected, as he was drugged, and drowned, as Lash nearly drowned him, and the second body was treated reverently, like a sacrifice. In fact, both bodies we’ve recovered, as you yourself discovered, were drowned in the very same fountain where Detective Sandburg himself was later drowned in a separate case. Captain Banks, I want that man immediately taken off the task force and placed in police custody.”

“Simon, you can’t do that, you know Blair’s innocent,” Jim pleaded.

Simon’s decision was interrupted by the telephone. “There’s another body in the warehouse district,” he said. “Jim, where’s Sandburg?”

“He was in bad shape this morning, I called Jack Kelso to watch him,” said Jim. “They’re back at the loft.” Nine-year-old BJ was in charge this morning, and had vehemently protested Jim leaving him behind, but Jim had been adamant.

“Get him. Take him to the crime scene and see what you find out, watch his reactions. Dr. Melling will go with you to keep everything aboveboard. Dr. Melling, I don’t want you saying one word to Sandburg. This theory of yours is just a theory; you don’t even have circumstantial evidence.”

“Yes sir,” the men chorused, and Jim stalked down to the parking garage, not waiting to see if Melling’s car was following his truck. Watch Blair’s reactions? There was no way in hell he was letting BJ near another dead body. He’d have to think of something quick.

He heard Kelso and Blair talking when he got to the loft, playing chess. “You’re home early,” said Blair. “Everything okay?”

Jim winced. “No, kiddo. Captain’s orders, I need to take you with me. They found another body.”

BJ gulped. “Is it … bad?”

“I don’t know. Probably.” What did BJ have to go for? Even if Melling’s ridiculous theory was right, BJ predated all Blair’s relevant traumas by fifteen years! What was the point of further scarring the little boy? “This is a bad idea, I should just call Simon and tell him--”

“No! You need me, Jim, I don’t want any more people to die because I was chicken!”

Jack Kelso grimaced, then shook his head. “BJ? Do you trust me?”

BJ eyed him. “I guess.”

“Can you come here and kneel on the floor, facing away from me? Jim, I want you to start calling ‘Detective Sandburg’, all right?”

“What are you going to do?” Jim demanded.

“Blair, this isn’t going to hurt. I promise. It’s just going to be a little scary.” With that, Jack slid one arm under Blair’s chin, clasped his elbow with his other hand, and started to squeeze.

Blair gasped and choked, slapping Jack’s arm and face to no avail. His face turned purple, and his breath came in little chuffing gasps, but Jack kept squeezing gently until Blair went limp.

“Blair!” Jim yelled, but at a sharp look from Jack, he started slapping Blair’s face and calling, “Detective Sandburg? Detective Sandburg, wake up.”

After a few seconds, Blair sucked in air and looked up at him. His eyes narrowed in hatred. “Jim?”

“Detective?” Jim tested.

“Yeah, I know who I am, man, what the hell am I doing on the floor? Where’s Megan?” He looked around and blinked in surprise. “Jack? What are you doing here? I haven’t seen you since the press conference.”

“I was just showing Jim why they call it a ‘sleeper hold’,” said Jack.

Before Blair could protest, Jim said, “Chief, they found another body. I know you’re pissed at me, but I need you there right now or this is going to get a lot worse.” He heard Melling coming up in the elevator, and said to Sandburg, “We’ve got to hurry. Please, I’m begging you; you have to trust me.”

Blair ran his hands through his hair, his fingers resting on one scar. “You haven’t left me much choice,” he said. “Let’s go.”

It wasn’t much, but they were out of time. “Jack, thank you,” said Jim.

Jack nodded. “Go.”

Blair sat as far away from Jim as he could on the drive over, using the time to catch up on the file, double-checking that he didn’t have any gaps in his information. When they got to the warehouse, though, the third body was so badly burnt they couldn’t figure out which of the girls it was. Blair barely caught a glimpse of it before the smell drove him out of the building to a patch of grass where a couple of other officers had lost their lunches before him. Jim controlled his own reaction and knelt by the body, dialing down smell to a bearable level.

Melling drove up and walked straight over to Blair. “You two gave me quite a chase. Scene getting to you, Sandburg?”

“Who’re you?” Sandburg wheezed, wiping his mouth and straightening up.

“I’m an FBI profiler; they called me in on this case,” said Melling smoothly.

“Jim? You see anything?” Blair called. Jim could still hear Blair’s stomach churning; he wasn’t doing too well with this.

“There’s a discolored patch on her chest,” said Jim. “Like it burned differently there.”

Blair’s pulse quickened. “Wool,” he gagged. “Wet wool to keep the heart from exploding, keep her alive and in pain longer.”

Jim stilled.

“How do you know that without looking?” Melling demanded.

“Hebrew school,” said Blair, which made absolutely no sense to Jim. “Burning, drowning, the church, but what about … oh right.”

Jim leapt to his feet and marched over to them. “Sandburg! Stop babbling and start making sense!”

Melling reached for his cuffs. “Detective Sandburg, I’m placing you under arrest for--”

“What?” said Blair, stumbling backwards.

“--the murder of--”

“No!” yelled Jim, trying to clear the distance.

And that was when Blair turned and ran. “Blair! Chief, stop!” Jim yelled.

“Stop or I’ll shoot,” Melling added, but before he could pull his gun, Blair had already jumped over the hood of a police car and jumped in the truck.

“Don’t worry,” Jim yelled to Melling as he ran. “Sandburg doesn’t have the keys!” This hope was routed, however, when the truck thrummed to life and tore out of the parking lot. “Sandburg, if you hot-wired my truck and screwed up the ignition, I’m going to kill you!” Jim yelled.

He jumped into the passenger side of Melling’s car and they tore off in pursuit of the truck. Melling was yelling an APB into the radio when the truck fishtailed around a corner and they lost it. “Where did he go?” Melling yelled.

“Jim, can you hear me?” It sounded like Sandburg was yelling in the distance. “God, this is such a mess. I know who’s killing the girls, and I think I know why, but if I’m right, I’m the only one who can get this guy to talk. Jim, this is just a big misunderstanding, but if you guys arrest me, he won’t talk to you, and you know we don’t have enough physical evidence without testimony. Jim, please, please, keep this jerk off my tail and away from Rainier.”

“Melling!” said Jim. “Sandburg would go to ground if he’s panicked; he used to live here in the warehouse district. He’s doubled back on us; we have to search the complex.”

The next hour was harrowing for Jim as he led the wild goose chase through the complex of warehouses and worried himself sick over his partner. The APB had already gone out; what if some overzealous cop shot Sandburg? What if the real killer got the better of him? Hell, what if the real killer knocked him out and suddenly reduced his would-be arrester to a kindergarten cop, an easy hostage?

Then the call came over the radio: “Attention all units, cancel APB on Detective Sandburg. We have the killer in custody.”

Jim raced back to the station with Melling to find Blair sitting, drained but exhilarated, in Simon’s office.

“He’s not cuffed!” Melling protested.

“No, he’s not,” Simon growled. “We have the killer down in Holding, thanks to Detective Sandburg, and we’ve sent a couple of uniforms to rescue the last victim. You want to explain it again, kid?”

Blair nodded as Jim and Melling took the other two seats. “I was looking through the case file, trying to figure out from my notes and Jim’s if I had missed anything on the days I couldn’t remember. Jim’s notes listed the second victim as having been garroted, but I put it down as stoning. I only remembered why that was significant when I saw how the third girl had been burned. See, when the Bible says you stone a witch or an adulteress to death, they don’t mean you throw rocks at them, they mean you tie a rock to a string and use it to strangle the person. It’s the sort of thing you pick up in Hebrew school when you’re bored; I loved that gruesome stuff when I was a kid. That’s why he tied them up and dunked them in the fountain. The girl who sank proved she was innocent, and he apologized as best he could by wrapping her in samite and leaving her in a church, so she could have a proper burial. The ones who floated were executed for witchcraft, one by stoning, the other by burning. That’s why they had needle marks, too; you were supposed to stab a witch with a needle to see whether she bled and felt pain or not, and smash their hands and feet to get them to name other witches.

“Anyway, once I knew what this guy was doing, I knew why. Naomi and her radical feminist buddies were always going on about the witch trials, all those male, university-educated doctors killing the midwives to cut down the competition. He was killing the smartest girls, the ones who beat him out for the position he wanted, the ones who out-did him in his classes and his rotations. He wasn’t killing indiscriminately, he was testing them, torturing them, giving them a chance to prove their innocence.

“Todd Parker related to me as a fellow scientist who had been screwed out of his rightful position by a powerful woman, Chancellor Edwards. Once I came to him on those terms, he was pretty forthcoming. Even gave me a few pointers on how to deal with her.”

“I’m sorry, Detective Sandburg,” said Melling. “The profile matched your case so well, everything seemed to point to … I honestly thought--”

“It’s okay,” said Blair. He gave Jim a sad, tired smile. “Sometimes you just have to remember, even when the evidence points a certain way, it’s still just circumstantial. It doesn’t prove anything.”

Jim swallowed hard and dared to meet Blair’s eyes. Did this mean he had a chance of redeeming himself?

“I’m going to want your reports on my desk by Friday,” said Simon. “Good work, gentlemen.”

Blair was quiet on the way home, and Jim didn’t dare risk putting his foot in his mouth by breaking the silence. At home, Jim pulled out some frozen shrimp and a box of pasta, and Blair automatically started chopping tomatoes, garlic and olives for pasta Provencal. His heart rate was agitated, his breath kept catching in his throat, and it was killing Jim not to go to him, not to kiss him and wrap himself around that stocky body.

Finally Blair looked up at him. “You scared me,” he said. “I trusted you to hold things together for me, and I woke up and everything was different.”

“I’m sorry--”

“No, let me finish.” He paused a moment, facing Jim. “I got badly hurt a long time ago. I never wanted to risk getting hurt like that again, and I so didn’t want to risk losing your friendship over a stupid crush. And then I wake up and I’m slick and aching from having you inside me, and I can’t remember any of it. I can’t remember our first kiss, or whether you love me, all I know is you wanted me gone so you could have that with the other part of me.” His voice cracked, and his eyes swum with tears.

Jim felt like the lowest piece of dirt. “I didn’t want you gone,” he said roughly. “I never wanted you gone. I just wanted all of you.” Carefully, tentatively, he rested his hands on Blair’s shoulders, relishing the comforting heft of his partner’s body. For a moment, Blair just stood there. Then, slowly, he leaned forward until he rested against Jim’s chest. Jim shook with relief. He’d been flying blind this whole time, trying not to get caught in a lie or a misstep, and all of a sudden he knew what Blair needed to hear, and no matter how hellish it was to put his feelings into words, he’d do it for Blair. “I was so scared of screwing up, I ended up making it worse. I thought if he assumed we were already together it would be okay, but if I told him I didn’t know what I was doing … I don’t know what I’m doing, Sandburg, that’s your job, you always know what I’m doing, you keep me out of trouble, but it just sort of mushroomed--”

And Blair was laughing against his chest, and he looked up and grinned and said, “Jim, you’re babbling.” He stood on tiptoe and kissed Jim, chuckling against his mouth, and Jim closed his eyes in gratitude and kissed him back with all the fervor of his heart.

When they finally broke apart, Jim said, “Chief? There’s something…” He blushed beet red. “I, well, I was kind of nervous, and I didn’t want him -- you -- him to just go ahead without, you know,” he floundered. He ducked his head for a moment, then met his partner’s blue eyes. “I guess I’m asking, will you be my first?”

A myriad of expressions flitted across Blair’s face, but he just said, quietly, “You were afraid he might hurt you by accident?”

“I want to give you that first time. I want to be with the guy who’s been my best friend for five years. I don’t want to be lying to the man I love when you’re inside me.”

Blair looked away, and Jim was terrified he’d said the wrong thing. Then Blair launched himself at Jim, kissing him, biting him, shoving up against him hard, and Jim shoved back, rocking against his partner, his lover, hugging him so tight that Blair could barely breathe, just desperate to clutch that muscular, hairy body as close to him as he could. He finally got his hands under Sandburg’s ass and hauled up until the smaller man had his legs hooked around Jim’s waist.

“Upstairs,” Jim muttered, striving to carry them both up the stairs without breaking their necks, because it seemed vitally important at the moment that they didn’t let go of each other for a second. He paused for a moment on the landing to kiss Blair, sweet and deep, relishing the slick, sweet taste of mint tea and honey and Blair.

And then Blair was unhooking his legs and getting down, and Jim started unbuttoning his shirt. Blair watched him shyly. “I guess you think it’s pretty silly, but I’ve never had a chance to really look at you, you know?” said Blair. “This is the first time in five years I haven’t had to sneak a glance as you head for the shower.”

Jim grinned, pleased, and a little shy himself, as he said, “That’s okay, as long as I can watch you, too.”

Blair smiled back, slowly pulling off his layers of shirts in a quiet striptease, his eyes raking Jim’s own show with frank approval. Finally they stood naked before each other, hands slowly, gently exploring a hairy chest, an old scar, smooth, broad pecs, the hollow of a hipbone, the veined shaft of a silky, hard cock.

Nervous, but feeling a sort of quiet peace inside him that he’d never felt before, Jim reached into the bedside drawer for a condom and the tube of Wet, handing both to Blair. “I want you to stretch me,” he said.

Blair gently pushed on his shoulders until Jim obediently lay down on the bed, his legs splayed, offering himself to Blair. Blair put the condom and the tube of Wet aside, stretching his length up Jim’s torso to kiss his mouth, his cheeks, his throat, down to his hard nipples. Jim made an urgent noise, but Blair was in no rush, he nibbled along the crease of Jim’s pecs, licked the outline of his washboard abs, until Jim was crying out, unsure whether to dial up or down to relieve the agonizing pleasure as Blair paid homage to each and every curve of his anatomy. “B-Blair, please,” he begged, and he could feel Blair chuckle as he nipped and sucked up the lines of Jim’s thighs, giving a wide, slow lick to each of Jim’s balls before moving lower to put his tongue to an entirely new use.

“BLAIR!” Jim shot off the bed, screaming, as the strange, wet invader explored his ass, sensations too strange to make sense of, but too delicious to stop. “God, Blair!” He whimpered and cried and begged and squirmed, but it was to no effect, Blair seemed determined to blissfully destroy his lover at his own sweet pace.

Jim wasn’t even aware when it changed until he tasted the trace of his own earthiness and opened his eyes to find Blair moving inside him, kissing him, remaking him. Jim couldn’t remember ever feeling more open, more vulnerable, more loved, and he tried to give that all back to Blair, to show in his eyes everything Blair made him feel. And then Blair subtly changed the angle of his thrusts, and Jim couldn’t think anymore, couldn’t do anything but cry out and hang onto his lover and pray he lived through it, because he was coming, he was coming, God I love you, Blair, love you so much!

When he came back to himself, Blair was pulling out and throwing the condom away, and then he returned to kiss Jim again and wipe them both clean. Jim was exhausted, completely ragged, but he clung to awareness with his fingernails, afraid of losing this moment with the man he loved more than his own life. “You’ll be here when I wake up?” he begged.

“I’ll watch over you while you sleep,” Blair promised. “I’ll stay awake. I’ll be here.”

End.

Back! Back, I say!